


Severus Seen

by pet_genius



Category: Harry Potter - J. K. Rowling
Genre: Canon Compliant, Childhood Trauma, Friendship, Friendship/Love, Gen, James Potter Being an Asshole, Lily Evans Potter & Severus Snape Friendship, Occlumency, POV Severus Snape, Psychological Trauma, Rape, Redemption
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-05-18
Updated: 2019-10-24
Packaged: 2020-03-07 13:54:44
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence, Major Character Death, Rape/Non-Con
Chapters: 50
Words: 64,755
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/18874543
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/pet_genius/pseuds/pet_genius
Summary: The Prince's Very Extended Tale - The story from Snape's perspective, as he struggles to redeem himself with help from an unexpected ally.Definitely meant for adults (dark themes, not smut). Complete (until I rewrite). I love reading people's comments so please leave them, positive and negative comments are welcome.





	1. Severus's Fearless Years

**Author's Note:**

  * For [Paganaidd](https://archiveofourown.org/users/Paganaidd/gifts), [Leigh](https://archiveofourown.org/users/Leigh/gifts).



> The story contains descriptions of violence toward children, woman, and people in general, bullying, and murder, self-injury, etc. I aspire to write a story that is trauma-informed and honest and compassionate as possible.

Severus Snape was _happy_ . There was a skip in his step and he held his head high. He was experiencing something very unusual, for him - invulnerability. He had an accomplishment he was proud of, and he was _recognized_ for it. He looked at people from above, and they _accepted_ it. Months like this were the reason he became a Death Eater. His path was finally paved. Nobody could take it away from him - he heard the prophecy, and he gave it to his master, the greatest wizard, the Dark Lord.

When Severus Snape realized his master took the prophecy to mean Harry Potter, somewhere deep within his mind, it is possible that he remembered how _lucky_ he felt that he was the one who got to deliver the prophecy to the Dark Lord, and how he should have known better, but most likely, he did not.

The feeling that the world had ended tugged at him gently, at first. The end of the seventh month saw the birth of two potential targets, after all. _He might change his mind. It might be the Longbottom baby. He is a pureblood, and both of his parents are gifted wizards…_

“Something on your mind, Severus?”

_He knows._

“My Lord… I believe it refers to the Longbottoms,” Severus said, hoping his tone did not betray the urgency.

“If you had not been careless enough to get yourself thrown out, we might have known for certain,” Lord Voldemort chastised him. The message was clear, to Severus and to all the other Death Eaters: No one is immune. Not even the one who gave me the prophecy.

Common sense screamed at him: _What are you doing? How thick are you? She chose Potter, she could not have run off to be with him faster, why would you risk your neck for her? He is going to kill you, then her. Shut up. Shut up. Shut up._

But Severus did not shut up. The fear he now felt was unlike anything he felt before. It was at once both familiar and strange. Not the cold sensation, the small electrocutions, the constricted flow of air he knew so well - it was that too, of course - but mixed with hope, hope of saving something worth saving, or preventing a catastrophe, a calamity…

“My Lord, I beg of you, spare Lily Evans,” he uttered.

The room fell silent. All eyes fell upon him, the Dark Lord’s eyes among them, and a crease formed between them, and his lower eyelids wrinkled, for a very brief moment before he became impassive again. Severus knew, instinctively, what he needed to say to get away with what he said: _He is your master. You care not for her. You want to use her and dispose of her. Give her what she deserves_. He uttered the vile words - “Oh but my Lord! I simply want to show her what a mistake she made be choosing Potter. Imagine the mudblood alone, her son dead, realizing she’s at my complete mercy. I simply want to repay her humiliation. And take what’s mine. Then you may do with her what you will”, and he believed them.

As Severus told lies of of lust and despicable desire, he remembered how, moments before he let the word “mudblood” escape his lips in reference to Lily for the first time, and the last time until that moment, James Potter hexed him, nearly drowned him in a mixture of sudsy water and his own saliva, how his throat struggled to expel it...

The foreign presence that invaded his mind receded. The great legilimens believed him.

“You will have your day with her,” the Dark Lord promised him. “She will not die before you get what is due to you.” His lips curled upwards slightly, suggestively, and he looked away.

It was not enough. He needed - the very thought almost made him audibly gulp - Dumbledore.

After the Meeting with Dumbledore 

_What have I done_ , Severus asked himself, or rather, the question asked itself in his mind, incessant and tormenting. _What have I done_ , a question that could refer to any number of things he did, but for which there was no answer. He could not think of anything else, as images and sounds rushed and flashed through his mind, _what have I done._

Severus Snape had just committed flagrant betrayal. He met with Dumbledore, Leader of the Order of the Phoenix and his master’s sworn enemy, and he swore to give him _anything_ to protect Lily and James, and their child.

The walls closed in on him. His nerves were frayed. His eyes were forced wide open in the dark room.

Severus was paralyzed, quite literally paralyzed, as if he had been subjected to the Full Body Bind. A sheen of unreality began to cover the events that just transpired, and Severus found himself reacquainted with a side of himself he was all too happy to leave behind, the Severus who cowered in darkness, who knelt before towering, contemptuous figures… This Severus has been dormant and silent for a little over four years. For a little over four years, Severus savored the silence. He has not been afraid in four years. Then, four (or forty) years’ worth of fear caught up with him in mere weeks.

 _He is going to kill me_ , Severus thought, and without him willing it, the meeting with Dumbledore assumed, in his mind, the quality of a dream, of a story told in the third person, of something that happened to somebody else. _You have done nothing. The Dark Lord loves you. You brought him the prophecy, and he loves you,_ his terrified psyche told him. Severus covered himself with a blanket up to his eyes like he did as a child. He did not miss this.

Slowly, very slowly (muscles trembling, every creak in the old house magnified), the lie he told himself to banish the intrusive, omnipresent sensations and memories began to take effect. _He loves you. He will spare her for you. He loves you._ If he could just keep the meeting with Dumbledore a secret, he might somehow make it through, and so might she.

He took out a book entitled simply: “Occlumency”.

October 31, 1981 

Usually, the Dark Lord picked any number of faithful servants to either accompany him or perform tasks for him, but destroying the Potters was a solo mission. Thus, Severus could not know. Nobody knew.

Lily had been protected by the Fidelius Charm. She was secluded, isolated, but alive. It has been months, and Severus finally felt like he could breathe freely again.

He betrayed his master, he fed information to Dumbledore, he even endured a Cruciatus or two as the Dark Lord had grown weary of listening to Severus plead with him to go after the Longbottoms first. All of it - for her. His love for her overcame his hatred for James. Some days, when he woke up, before the waking world caught up to him, it even seemed to eclipse his love for the Dark Lord. It frightened Severus, but she was alive, and as long as she was alive, he could love both Lily and Lord Voldemort, and as long as he loved Lord Voldemort, he could live as well.

The first sign that anything was wrong appeared - or rather, disappeared - on Severus’s arm. The Dark Mark was faded. This could not be. _Dumbledore_ , he thought. _I have to get to Dumbledore._ _  
_ Shortly thereafter, Severus staggered out of Dumbledore’s office. Though he felt like every step was a step off a cliff, outwardly, his movements looked slow and reserved.

Sirius Black betrayed Lily - betrayed _James_ , and gave the Dark Lord the location of their hideaway. The Dark Lord set off to seek and destroy them, and apparently, he gave Lily a choice, and Lily - naturally, so naturally - did not take that choice.

If the Dark Lord loved him and wanted to reward him, he did not love him enough to merely petrify Lily and only do away with the child. She died. The little girl who charmed flowers and flew off a swing, who could control her magic at the age of nine without even knowing she was magic, died of the Killing Curse. Severus came very close to finding out if one could cast the Killing Curse on oneself. He fully believed that he could.

Then, Dumbledore said her son had her eyes. He tormented him with the memory of the almond-shaped and emerald-colored eyes that once smiled at him and were now closed forever, and somehow, this pulled him back to the land of the living, the land of suffering and pain and loss and fear, his constant companions.

Severus was able to secure Dumbledore’s vow of secrecy. If he had to stay alive, nobody could know. Nobody could touch that tender part of him.

But one person, one person alive, knew all too well, and that person’s silence had to be secured.

Severus set out to find Petunia Dursley.

He found the long-necked harpy at No. 4, Privet Drive.

“I know by now that I can’t force you to love him anymore than I could force her to love me,” he said to her in the most menacing tone he could muster in his grief. “But if he dies, your blonde Muggle lump dies. If you get rid of him, your son will suffer. I am not above torturing filth like you and yours, Petunia. Or killing.” He hoped she remembered how much it hurt her when he charmed a tree branch to hit her Muggle shoulder.

After she recovered from the shock, she realized Severus Snape was the only one who could answer her question: “what if my son is like her?” He scoffed. Then, almost inaudibly, she asked him if she suffered. He thought to answer, “Only if you call being a fugitive because your childhood friend betrayed you to the most powerful dark wizard the world has ever known, dying, having just witnessed your husband murdered, in fear for your son’s life, knowing your secret keeper gave you away, suffering. But the death itself was painless.” Instead, he said only: “No. I hope to never see you again. And one more thing, _Tuney._ I put a curse on you. As long as you live or until I break it, you will not be able to tell a soul about me. So do not try.” With that, he left. That took care of the only person who knew what he lost.

Petunia was nothing like her sister. In appearance she was average; whatever appeal she might have had was negated by her jealousy, her envy, her shrill demeanor, her bitter disposition. What was she like when she was not clamoring for attention in Lily’s shadow? Severus neither knew, nor cared.  
In his Death Eater years, he hardly thought of Lily, and he never thought of Petunia. He could hardly spare her a thought when they were children, after all, except hoping she will go away or shut up. But a face from the distant past has a way of opening the floodgates, and that face - that confused, terror-stricken, yet spiteful face - opened the floodgates.

A friend, a fight, a funeral  
The summers, the Christmas breaks, Lily’s parents and their house - Severus’s respite from misery and violence at school, at home.

The rush of memories was barely coherent, but unlike the memories of his secret meetings with Dumbledore, the dream-like quality, the third person feel, did not affect them in the least.

When Severus was only 9 years old, he ran to his mother - his poor, depleted, defeated mother - and after instinctively checking that his father was not home, he asked her: “Are there other witches and wizards here? I think I found one.”  
The pale black-haired woman listened to his confused account and confirmed - the girl is magic. She has _extraordinary_ magic. Just knowing this relieved a loneliness so deep and so complete, that the boy realized for the first time that he has been lonely, that he would like a friend… He got lost in thought, but the sound of his father’s approaching footsteps took him out of his reverie, and when the key entered the keyhole, the boy and his mother both flinched - she looked at him with a pained, guilty expression, and their conversation about magic was over. Tobias did not like hearing about his wife’s and son’s “abnormality”. He only believed magic was real when something went wrong, when an appliance stopped working, when he lost a bet. Why should he have? Eileen only agreed to volunteer that she lost of power in a “freak accident” (“freak alright”, Tobias used to mock her), so the only evidence of magic, as far as he was concerned, was that Eileen was completely useless at doing anything the normal way.  
But the girl became his friend, and she was _impressed_ with him, his stories about Hogwarts, the Ministry, Azkaban and the Dementors (it amused him, the way she worried about them - who would want to put her there? Who would want to see her suffer?).

She used to invite him to her house, and her parents were nothing like his - they were warm, loving, kind - and they were proud of their witch daughter.

He desperately wanted to turn 11, turn 11 and go, get away from Spinner’s End and be among his own kind at last, but it went wrong immediately. The Hogwarts Express barely left Platform 9 ¾ before he somehow managed to make two enemies, and Lily, though still his friend, now did not need him. She too was among her kind, and she was one of those rare people who were both universally loved and worthy of this love. He only had her to himself in the summers and Christmas breaks.  
Their fifth year Christmas break, that he almost did not go on, would be the last break they would spend as friends. It was a farce of a break, and as it drew to a close, Severus had enough of watching the Muggle bastard who gave him his nose terrorize his mother. “Hurt her again and you die, Tobias. The Muggle police won’t know what hit them,” he promised his father, not caring that delivering on his promise will surely land him in Azkaban.

The rage that ensued was such that the only place where he was safe was Lily’s house. He limped there, and told her everything, and she cried, and her tears were phoenix tears. “You did the right thing,” she told him. “You are so brave, Sev,” she said. Her parents insisted on giving her money to buy her very own broomstick, after that. They flatly refused to consider letting her ride one until then, of course, and of course she never did buy that broomstick - the loud and completely fake argument they had about it was a pretext for giving him money to buy supplies. Nobody in the whole world had a friend like her, he felt.  
Months later, only months, Severus uttered the filthy word that severed him from Lily. It should have been a good day. He knew he had just earned an O in his Defense Against the Dark Arts O.W.L.

It became his most shameful memory.

That summer, he earned money working for the Malfoys for a couple of weeks, before he came home and found out his mother had died. He pointed the wand at his father: “Get out, and never come back”. His father left without so much as an attempt to explain or to beg for his life, and Snape never knew what eventually killed her. He owled Lily and asked her to stand by him at the small service... The message she owled back to him only said: “I am sorry about your mother. I liked her. The Malfoys, not so much”. _Have it your way, Lily,_ he thought.

After he magically erected a tombstone for Eileen Prince, he owled the Malfoys. “I am ready for the Dark Mark. No one can stop me now.”  
Too proud to have a last look in the direction of the Evans house, he was gone.  
The Dark Lord appeared reluctant to let a 16-year-old join his army, but Lucius Malfoy spoke very highly of the young man. Lucius always believed in him, always supported him, and he could not be happier that Lily was out of the picture.

The fearless years  
“I do not wish to interfere with your magical education”, the Dark Lord said. “I reward commitment. You are free, always, to leave,” he promised him. But with nowhere to go, young Severus wanted nothing more than to join the Death Eaters. He told the Dark Lord everything, about his Muggle father and the vendetta he had against the nasty, idiotic savages who dared to call the wizards freaks. Against the mudbloods who could always be trusted to choose their ridiculous families and their old values, as if magic was just handy skill, a party trick, when he knew that it was so much more.

He thought of Lily and the moving flower petals she showed Petunia. _She will never understand._ Magic was tradition, power, will, the magical world was so much bigger than so-called friendship, so much bigger than humanity.  
Severus implored, pleaded, besought the Dark Lord to give him the Mark. What else was there? Finally, the Dark Lord was satisfied of his commitment and of his longing, and the ceremony began. The process of receiving the Mark was almost hypnotic. He was calm. No defense was necessary, no doubt gnawed at him. The Dark Lord looked straight into his heart, and he saw his grief for his mother and the shame that he could not bring himself to kill his father. “Worry not, Severus. We will help you overcome your sentimentality”. The poverty... the ridicule... the bullying... the jealousy, the resentment, the helplessness against his father as he shouted profanities at his mother and him, as he beat them, and as he no longer needed to, but did anyway… The friend who could not forgive one word, whom he thought loved him, but apparently did not… and the next time Severus opened his eyes, his inner left arm bore the Mark that advertised that he was one of the select few, a Death Eater.

The Dark Lord knew just what to say. After he gave him the Mark, when they were alone, Lord Voldemort confided in him: “Almost a squib of the mother and a Muggle father, Severus? We are so alike.” He promised him a place in the world he was to build, and acceptance. “Everyone will know of your greatness. Your children will never suffer this disgrace.” He swelled with pride, hope for the future reared its head, anticipation bubbled in him. He practically forgot to care about the results of his O.W.L.s.  
For the first time, Severus felt at home. He did not need Lily. Finally, he could see a future, a life, without her. No Lily, no Eileen - his love was reserved for the Dark Lord and him alone, and he was rewarded for it, until the dust settled and Lily was taken from the world because of what he did.

The fearless years were resolutely over: Severus’s worst fear came true. His psyche rearranged itself around that fact - he loved Lily, and he killed her. He brought the Dark Lord the prophecy. Nobody could take that away from him. _What have I done?_ He asked himself - and he answered: _You killed her._

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I rewrote this chapter and I think it's much better now, and much more consistent with the style the story went on to take, but if somebody who read the original version misses it for some reason, I have it backed up! I am planning to develop this story into a novel-length work!


	2. After the Acquittal

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Severus's second life begins after the trial.

"By the way, the job is yours", Dumbledore said, after Snape had been acquitted. 

"What?" Snape asked.  
"You were going to apply for a job, were you not?"

Everything was a blur. He forgot everything that happened on that day except hearing the prophecy and rushing to deliver it to the Dark Lord with glee. Suppressing his alternating urge to throw up and turn his wand on himself, he asked the Headmaster: "Defense against the dark arts?"  
"Still not over your death wish, I see.” Dumbledore said, sternly and sadly. “No. You are too valuable. Potions".

In the 11 uneventful years between the acquittal and the young Potter's return to the wizarding world, his only duty was to continue to practice his skills and get on the good side of every death eater who had walked free, so when the day comes he will be able to play his part well. 

Part of him had hope the Muggles will succeed in beating the magic out of the boy, but he knew from experience that it was not a reliable strategy. 

Somehow, he convinced the other death eaters who walked free that Voldemort had sent him to spy on  
Dumbledore and that he was still committed to the task. Most conveniently, the Dark Lord really did send him to get a teaching post as a way to influence young minds and keep an eye on the Headmaster. Curiously, Lucius Malfoy didn't ask too many questions - in fact, he seemed to have made a point of not investigating into his friend's apparent change of heart too much. Snape figured Lucius didn't need to know if it meant Snape won't attempt to reciprocate by questioning his defense - that he was Imperiused (which went down the Wizengamot's throats easier with a side of considerable donations to select causes).

All things considered, his life has been almost the same as if he had never sent the Dark Lord after Lily - he was a teacher, just as the Dark Lord ordered him. What he wanted to do with his life was apparently a moot point, and in earnest, he had no idea - all he ever wanted to be after school was a death eater, and dreams like a career of his own choice, or love and a family of his own, felt like they belonged in the next life. Now that he had Lily's life to atone for, he knew that for absolute fact.

As soon as the boy came to the school it was clear as could be that his death wish was a match to Snape's own. Perhaps it was the decade of solid brutality at the Dursleys’, or maybe it was typical Gryffindor foolishness. He seemed so eager to waste his mother's gift of life, so eager to fill his father's mediocre shoes. Truly, it was aggravating that everyone still remembered James as some great wizard when he was nothing but a good flyer who had the good sense to die tragically, and young.

Protecting this boy seemed more and more like an exercise in futility at best, and an exercise at honoring the memory of his bully at worst. With everyone pumping his head full of nonsense about his defeat of the Dark Lord, an accomplishment that was actually Lily's, it also fell upon him to remind him that he was nothing but a dunderheaded 11-year-old whose only duty was to remain the boy who lived, and not the boy who lived only to be eaten by a three-headed dog or fall off a broomstick or ingest whatever toxic sludge he brewed instead of a simple potion - all the while, not knowing that awful truth about how his circumstances turned out to be so extraordinary.

It was enough to overwhelm anyone. But Snape had to remain stoic and control his emotions. If not for Lily, then because he could not risk letting his emotions get the best of him and end up being either exposed or losing Dumbledore’s support and ending up back in Azkaban.

As time went by, Severus found that he did not miss being a death eater at all. Yes, he loved the dark arts, he loved the company of great wizards who treated him as one of their own, he loved working toward a world order he believed in where he could make sure the likes of himself never had to endure the treatment he had. But it was all irrevocably lost with Lily Evans. He knew it. He could never faithfully serve shoulder to shoulder with Lucius, Barty, or Bellatrix, who were his friends, but never her. Not like she was. 

As soon as his eyes opened, as soon as he realized the Dark Lord would never change his mind, would not use the simplest magic to allow Lily to live, he was no longer interested in the new world order, or as the Dark Lord called it, the “natural order”.

But the one thing he truly missed was how simple it all was, from the moment he joined to the moment he left, having single-minded focus and solid faith in the cause and in the leader. Sometimes, more than he missed her, just barely. It’s not like there was no danger ahead or petty intrigue and politics of the sort he detested. The death eaters had their issues with his heritage and relative poverty, but with the Malfoys vouching for him, he knew his magic and talent will win out, he knew his children will have a better life.

But even the memories of a simpler life, unfettered by attachments to Eileen or to Lily, felt different every time he braved to look at them. He felt his beliefs changing almost despite himself, and he could hardly recall how he used to espouse falsehoods about blood purity with complete faith without wincing. Although the notions of muggle enslavement still had some appeal, he did not know how he could forget the kindness Lily’s parents showed him. And yet, in his new life, those falsehoods exactly he had to pretend to believe for the sake of his new mission, thus ensuring the continued distrust of anyone on whose side he now was. 

Dumbledore told him that if he loved Lily, his way forward was clear, but he could hardly see more than a day ahead. 

As he settled into life as a reformed death eater and a teacher (two things, or three, depending on the day you asked, he never wanted to be) he held onto the only absolute, the only constant, so much so that he had no choice but to develop an unhealthy fixation on the one fact: He had loved Lily Evans, and she died because of him. It seemed to suit Dumbledore just fine when his new potions master wasn’t trying to obliviate himself or sectusempra himself or drink enough sleeping potion to take out Hagrid, but he always intervened in time, shielding Snape against himself, and these episodes became fewer and further between, as his future without Lily became the present, and as love and remorse, guilt and fear, became so intertwined that he could barely tell them apart.

He knew for sure that he would never trust again.

Not even Albus would know more than was vital. For how could he, when the one person he trusted killed the only other one?


	3. Puppets on Strings

“There is a curious phenomenon with muggles”, Dumbledore said one day, unprompted, in that playful, academic, distant tone of his, and Snape did not respond. “My friends at magical law enforcement and at the Muggle liaison department told me about it. A Muggle with no link to the wizarding world whatsoever convinces himself, and others, that he has some supernatural ability or some link to supernatural beings. Of course their so-called powers aren't even remotely impressive by our standards, but even so, they often are able to gather followers and sometimes, even lead them to do unspeakable things, or even to their death”.

Snape seems more and more distant.

Dumbledore continued: "Do you really not see what this has to do with your situation?"

"Excuse me, Albus, but are you accusing the Dark Lord of somehow faking his skill or are you accusing me of being anything like the idiotic Muggles?"  
Dumbledore realized this was going to take some time. "Voldemort's powers are real. everything always pointed to an exceptional wizard from the very beginning. But everything also always pointed at a controlling, sadistic, manipulative human. You can’t separate magic from the wizard, Severus".

Severus scoffed at him. "He didn't imperius any of us."

"Again, you are missing the point. These people, cult leaders, did not, could not, imperious anyone. In a completely non-magical fashion, they eroded their followers' ability to think for themselves. They prey on them at times of crisis and confusion, and offer certainty and belonging and community. This phenomenon is almost unheard of in the magical world, and even now, I'm afraid our community is reluctant to see it for what it is, but it is only helping reinforce the myth of Voldemort.” Severus winced at the name. Dumbledore, unfazed, continued. “He was an exceptional wizard, but he controlled his death eaters in ways that were completely human.” He paused. “And the Muggles were not idiotic. These unfortunate souls are simply victims.”

Whatever Dumbledore said, Snape couldn't conceive of himself as a victim.

Lily and James were dead, so many others were in St. Mungo’s forever, the Longbottoms – a walking shadow of their former selves. He certainly couldn't conceive of, say, the LeStranges, as victims, or of Mulciber, who took perverse pleasure in Muggle children, and proceeded to obliviate them, while no one among the death eaters, including Severus himself, did anything to stop this.  
"I suggest you brew yourself some calming draught and learn a little about Muggle psychology", Dumbledore said. "It might seem like a waste of time, but we remain woefully uneducated on the non-magical part of our psyches, and it is, after all, the most powerful."

Some more of Albus's drivel. If he kept him out of Azkaban just to subject them to this nonsense until the Dark Lord was vanquished, he didn't know if this was indeed preferable. But the more thought about it, the more sense it made.

No wizard ever attempted to control a large number of Muggles, for fear of alerting magical law enforcement without incurring any discernible benefit, and if they wanted to control wizards – there were magical ways to do it. But to accomplish what the Dark Lord accomplished was unprecedented in magical history. And after all, resisting the Imperius curse was not so hard…

He remembered what the Dark Lord used to say to him. "Our kind will sooner protect the muggles than protect you against the violence he subjected you and your poor mother to. The Muggle borns will choose their family over you every time. It is not your fault, and there is nothing wrong with you. In fact, I am sure she will come to regret it. She simply fails to see what you see, to know what you know". Bitterly, Severus agreed with him. Lily chose a man who was no kinder or more magically gifted than he was, because of his higher status, and because he knew better than to call her a mudblood. But of course, James never had to endure to kind of treatment that Severus did.

The Dark Lord offered forgiveness, respect, recognition, community, even something resembling love and friendship - though always with strings attached. To Barty Crouch he offered a father figure, always attentive, always full of praise.  
Bellatrix seemed to have everything, from status to riches to prodigious skill, but she longed for a life of passion, to be loved by an equal, by a superior wizard, even, to perfect and sharpen her skills. Essentially forced to marry a man she grew up with as a brother, she was trapped having everything she was always taught to want, but she never had what she needed, until she accepted the Dark Mark. As for the others, who knew. Crabbe and Goyle Sr. were simply too imbecilic not to follow Malfoy, it seemed, and Mulciber and Mancair simply enjoyed the free reign of cruelty. Regulus Black, surely eager to prove to his parents that he wasn't his brother, followed his cousin, no questions asked.

To each of them, the Dark Lord promised what they wanted the most, as if they had been standing in front of the Mirror of Erised. To each, only when they were alone. As he "confided in Severus" about his Muggle father, he confided in Crouch about his sense of abandonment, and in Bellatrix about his longing to further the dark arts in a world that will not allow it, and so on and so forth, never exactly lying, but never truthful, never vulnerable, and always making sure each death eater believed he was his favorite, or second in command, or the most faithful. One of Severus's favorite feelings was the feeling that he was valued and seen.

But whatever Dumbledore said, Severus had a much simpler explanation for the life he found himself leading: Lily Potter's killer, James Potter's son's protector. He was simply the very unlucky son of a very unlucky woman. Whether this was a curse, a very prolonged side effect, or the deeper nature he inherited from her and the Muggle bastard, he did not know, but he did not have much reason to care.


	4. Eileen

Eileen Prince got an interview at St. Mungo’s. It was her dearest ambition and a wonderful opportunity, and she could not waste it. Rather than allow herself to become overcome with emotion, she sat down and weighed her options and her chances.

She was a brilliant potioneer - she even earned bonus points on her N.E.W.T.s for her originality and precision. She had the potential to become a trailblazer, that much she knew.

She had the drive, the ability to peer down a simmering cauldron for hours on end, and the patience and passion it took to experiment. What she lacked was the charm, the tact, the people skills. She could crush dragon eggshells into a powder so thin it was soft, but people drove her to her wit’s end in minutes. Not, in short, the temperament and the disposition it took to pass a job interview.

What she needed was luck. Luck could make it so her interviewer will be someone who appreciates skill, not sycophancy. Or, failing that, luck could make it is so she will know what to say to get the job.

Of course she got the job.

She was determined to succeed at it.

It didn’t feel like cheating – after all, Felix Felicis only tipped the odds in your favor. It did not make you do things you simply could not do. She got the job using it, so surely, there was some ethical theory out there that said the right thing to do would be to perform the actual job using all the tools she used to get it. She would not have outsourced the job to someone less skilled, so why outsource it to a less fortunate version of herself? Was the most important thing not to develop cures for the ailing? Did the people languishing with advanced spell damage in the floors above her have time for her to experiment when a spoonful of the golden potion could help her get it right in weeks rather than months?

Felix Felicis was like an inner friend who always had the best ideas, and she allowed herself to grow accustomed to following that friend. Her achievements were unprecedented. Her potions and balms worked flawlessly. For a novice, she was incredible, and well on her way to potioneering greatness.

Luck, she knew, was a dangerous thing to depend on, and when Christmas came and with it, a break, she decided to stop taking it. What did she need luck for when she was on vacation? She missed her family, and she missed having her own thoughts and following her own instincts, just a little bit.

She found that it took longer to wear off than she had expected it to. That gentle and not-so-gentle compulsion to act a certain way and do certain things that seemed and felt nonsensical but that always worked out perfectly did not seem to leave her.

She did not let that worry her. She was home, with her parents and siblings, whom she loved, finally with something to show for her time in the world, for her magical education, for the grueling work.

Quickly, she realized they were ill. She was confident that she could heal them on her own, no healer license on consent required. The friend she had grown so used to listening to told her what to do, and she whispered spells at them to diagnose and help them. Nothing seemed to work. They seemed to deteriorate with every attempt, growing faint, pale, and weak as she frantically tried every incantation and every homemade remedy she could think of. Her father, Severus, had enough of her, finally, and he insisted on apparating them all to St. Mungo's. Eileen knew her reputation will be destroyed, but there was no choice - even she recognized it.

Her father lost a limb apparating and what was left of him died of blood loss before the others got there, right in front of the hospital. The others did not try to apparate, having realized that the limb stayed in the family living room, but there wasn’t enough time for anything else.

By the time everyone was at the hospital, every voice in her head was silent - there was only horror.

She was suspended immediately, and learned, after what felt like forever, that her parents and her siblings did not survive.

And just like that, she was no longer addicted to Felix Felicis. It turned out that the withdrawal from the potion was as painful as it was abrupt.

At the trial she was given a choice between a very long time in Azkaban or a short sentence with the added penalty of having her wand destroyed. She chose the latter without hesitation. If she never did magic again, she felt, it will be too late. Ollivander’s eyes were moist as he confirmed that the wand - “13 inches, willow, dragon heartstrings” - was indeed hers. She, however, felt nothing as they broke it.

A year with the Dementors left her barely able to talk about what happened to her, and indeed, with no one to talk _to_. She knew she would never set foot in a hospital in any capacity, as a healer or a patient. She also no longer had a temper left to lose with people. She left the island prison, and her life as a forlorn Muggle began.

As a Muggle, she was useless, but useless was better than what she was as a witch - an unwitting instrument of ruin. The Prince family name was gone, commemorated only in Daily Prophet headlines about her family's tragic end. What the story lacked in nuance, it made up for in sensation.

Why Tobias Snape took a shining to her, she did not know - but he did. Eileen Prince, Trailblazer, became Eileen Snape, Housewife. She was no longer ambitious.

She did not even tell her husband she was a witch, breathed not a word of magic, of St. Mungo’s, of cauldrons, charms, or wands. She could endure Tobias, his temper, his belt, his balled fists. Her secret was - she deserved it.

She had no choice but to tell him about magic, however, when the son she bore him (and insisted on naming Severus, the only thing she insisted on, no matter how much he protested) demonstrated unmistakable signs of magic. He was a mere infant when Tobias smashed against an invisible wall as he charged toward them, and collapsed in a heap on the floor. She knew it was the baby. She lost all desire to protect herself long ago.

Eileen allowed a new ambition to take hold of her heart. It took root in the soil, and it was always as close to being extinct as the Prince line itself. Her ambitious heart was a field of ruin, a forest burned to cinders. Tobias was a hungry animal that prowled the burned landscape, and the child - a plant that somehow sprouted the first leaves among the ashes. The Prince name might live on.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> This chapter is also extensively re-written.


	5. Weak People

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> The Dark Mark returns, and Snape's worries are compounding. Dumbledore has a plan.

It was at the beginning of the boy’s fourth year that he saw what he feared the most. The Dark Mark on the inside of his left arm was growing darker. It was still faint, you had to know what you were looking for - but there was no mistaking it. It was fortunate that Severus never got used to short sleeves - another privilege he left to those whose reputation was less tarnished. 

Dumbledore was grateful to him for alerting him to the darkening mark, but their practice occlumency sessions began to suffer - in his growing fear and the lack of focus that ensued, he was increasingly unable to withstand Dumbledore’s assaults on his psyche.

As if this wasn’t enough, between three celebrated headmasters, the entire Hogwarts staff, and Ministry officials, no one was able to override the Goblet of Fire, and to his shock and dismay, Harry Potter was entered into the tournament. That the lowlife Karkaroff didn’t care did not surprise him, but the others’ behaviour was truly unfathomable. It was as if the entire wizarding world had conspired to feed the boy’s arrogance and hunger for attention and fame, as if they had their hearts set on making sure he will fill his father’s shoes and end his life in the same way.

Even Dumbledore seemed to be more worried about Severus and his ever more open mind. “You need this now, more than ever!”, he admonished Snape, as if the point somehow eluded him. Snape was at a loss, but the Headmaster had yet another of his unorthodox ideas. “The Pensieve was incredibly useful for us, but it is not the best place, I believe, for keeping thoughts and emotions safe”, he said, as if they had time for riddles.

Refusing to give him the satisfaction by asking what he was talking about, Severus glared at him in silence. “What you need is another person to talk to.”  
“You swore you’d never tell, Albus”.  
“I didn’t understand why then, and I don’t understand why now - but this is not what I’m suggesting. I’m suggesting that you tell somebody what you’re trying to conceal.”

The long explanation about how thoughts, memories, and emotions want to be expressed, and how they tend to do so in the least opportune moments when denied for too long, was very nice in theory, but to let anybody else know the truth was an unacceptable risk. Yet Dumbledore insisted that it was not enough that he knows - he was the death eaters’ second most important target, and confiding too much in him would imperil everyone, and guarantee that if something were to happen to him, Snape won’t be able to carry on the task without him. Even Dumbledore knew he had to stay on a need-to-know basis, and of course, some things were simply none of his business, Headmaster and Leader of the Order of the Phoenix or not. Still, it was not an option.

But even Severus had a last straw, and he had to accept that Dumbledore was right when he was able to view the memory of Tobias Snape leaving his home alive after he may or may not have killed his mother, and of Severus accepting the dark mark shortly thereafter.  
He averted his gaze, but Dumbledore did not. “You were not a murderer at 16. You cannot blame yourself.”  
Severus got up and left without a word.

After that, Dumbledore refused to have any more practice sessions with his spy. He wanted to ask him if he considered his proposal at all, but before he could finish the sentence, Severus interrupted him. “Everyone in the order is as much a target as you are. I am only meant to spy on you. I cannot explain away becoming associated with anybody else when the Dark Lord comes back”.

To himself, he said, “or survive losing another friend”.

To Snape’s surprise, Dumbledore seemed very pleased with himself. “I have an idea. But you’ll have to let go of some misconceptions”.

Certain that if he let go of one more misconception, he’d forget his name, he asked: “Do you wish me to legilimens you or are you enjoying the suspense?”

The Headmaster told him to meet him tomorrow, at the nearest stop they’ll be able to disapparate from. Less than 24 hours later, he found himself standing in Privet Drive.


	6. Disdain and Distrust

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Dumbledore's new unorthodox idea is a little too unorthodox for Severus.

“Have you completely lost your mind?!” he hissed at Dumbledore. “Petunia Dursley?!”  
“I had a rather different idea. There are other residents in this street. Follow me.” Severus followed.

Albus knocked on the door of a nondescript house and a prematurely gray-haired 40-something woman in robes and slippers opened the door.

Severus barely registered that the woman knew the venerated Albus Dumbledore was coming to visit and she chose to welcome him in rags, when the woman turned to the venerated Albus Dumbledore and shouted - “Have you completely lost your mind?!”

Dumbledore barely suppressed a self-satisfied smirk, but he changed his expression to that of understanding and concern quickly. “You have my word, he will not hurt you”.  
Ms. Figg said: “You’re bringing a known death eater to my doorstep and I’m supposed to just take your word for it?”

Tired of not being acknowledged, Snape informed her that he had no interest in hurting her. When he looked behind her, inside the house, the only thing reminiscent of magic were a few half-breed kneazles. “Even so, if you want to come in, you will both leave your wands in the mailbox”.

Dumbledore happily obliged, but Snape left his wooden stick there with a look of pure distrust.

They entered the house. The shelves were full of books on every subject under the sun - except magic.

The three observed one another in silence. “Arabella, I wouldn’t dream of bringing him here if I believed he had any wish to hurt you. He is a death eater, yes, but if I had not believed him reformed I would not have given him a post at my school. I trust him completely, and that I stand here with him without my wand is proof enough”.  
Severus knew a wizard of Dumbledore’s calibre could protect himself against Severus and whoever this was without a wand, in blindfolds, but he said nothing.

“It’s time I introduced you properly”, Dumbledore continued. “Arabella, I normally would have conjured us some drinks, but I must ask you to pour us some.”  
She got up and fetched three glasses and an old, dusty bottle.

“I don’t have company often”, she said matter of factly, still eyeing Severus suspiciously.

“Arabella, meet Severus. Severus, Arabella”.

They both looked at Dumbledore, and then at each other.  
“Severus Snape is a valued member of the Order of the Phoenix and the Hogwarts Potions Master. Arabella here has been keeping watch over Harry Potter on my behalf since he landed on the Dursleys’ doorstep.”

Snape asked himself how come he never heard the name Figg in his entire life. 

“We are here because the Order needs your help.”

Still eyeing Severus suspiciously, Ms. Figg said she will be happy to help any legitimate member of the Order who wouldn’t rather her have murdered or enslaved. That was when Severus finally got it. “A squib?!” He asked the room around him, incredulous. “You expect me to bet everything on a woman who can’t charm a cat to chase a rat?! I’m leaving”.

“That would be for the best”, Figg said, expressing none of the fear he had become used to seeing on the faces of those incapable of magic.

“It seems that my plan failed”, Dumbledore said. Never one to forget his manners, he got up and continued. “Let us intrude on you no more. Thank you for the drinks, Arabella.”

The two wizards headed to the door. As Severus walked past the mailbox, the squib said to him, derision dripping from every syllable, “don’t forget the duplicate wand you made. I take it that you used Dumbledore’s to cast a Geminio charm?”

In Severus’s subconscious mind, the word “interesting” formed just beneath the surface, almost bubbling up as he directed one more disdainful look at her before leaving without another word.


	7. The Dark Lord Returns

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Snape returns to the Dark Lord. He is tortured and tested as he struggled to hold on to his sanity and keep his cover.

“I am not such a coward,” Severus said in protest to Dumbledore’s accusation that he could have considered joining Igor Karkaroff, the most recent escaped Death Eater.  
"You are a braver man by far than Igor Karkaroff. You know, I sometimes think we Sort too soon…" Dumbledore said to Severus. Pronouncing him a braver man by far than Karkaroff was hardly a compliment, but then again, Severus hardly felt brave. On the other hand, Severus was always meant to return to his master. What else had been the point of the past 14 years? “The Dark Lord will return, and Harry Potter will be in terrible danger when he does” - were these not Dumbledore’s exact words?

It never occurred to Severus to say the words: “I too am in terrible danger”. It has been over an hour since he has been summoned, but he did not heed the summons. If Dumbledore wanted a spy, he would have to ask for one. Severus was owed at least this courtesy, he felt - or perhaps he was delaying the inevitable. But Dumbledore eventually asked, and Severus complied. He heeded the Mark’s call and found himself in Little Hangleton. 

His fortune was such that his first meeting with his master followed a humiliating defeat. The Dark Lord banished all the Death Eaters who witnessed Harry Potter’s miraculous escape - all but one. Peter Pettigrew, now sporting a metallic arm, opened the door, obviously relieved that he no longer had to be alone with the wizard who defeated death, but could not defeat Harry Potter…

“Enter, Severus,” the Dark Lord ordered him, and when Severus entered, he faced the back of a grand chair.

A hand, so pale it was almost blue, raised a wand, and Severus did not know if it was a silent spell or his own reflexes, but he found himself kneeling. His mind took him to the hilltop where he met with Dumbledore, where he shouted at the flash of white light: “Don’t kill me!”

“Don’t hurt me!” Severus shouted now, as Lord Voldemort turned the entire room around the chair and Severus found himself facing him for the first time. The deathless Dark Lord was a serpent with limbs, hairless, noseless, with red eyes, and a cold voice.

“Don’t hurt me” was the wrong thing to shout. “That depends, Severus…” his master said, caressing his wand. “I will hurt you, but how much I hurt you depends on how much you deserve it.”

Severus counted the number of mistakes he already managed to make: First, he was late. Second, he did not say “don’t hurt me, _my Lord.”_ He deserved an eternity of pain.

“My Lord, your disciple returned to your faithful service. If you allow your humble supplicant to resume his role… I can be valuable to you, I know it!”

The Dark Lord tentatively flicked his wand, and wire formed around Severus’s neck, dangerously tight… tight enough to inspire panic, but not tight enough to suffocate him.

“Valuable to me? Lord Voldemort does not forget. I am surprised that you returned. What have you got to say for yourself, traitor?”

_Traitor? How does he know? What does he know?_

The wire grew a little tighter, almost imperceptible to the eye, but perceptible indeed to the throat.. In response to Severus’s silence, the Dark Lord continued: “I thought so. Fourteen years. For fourteen years I have been barely alive, a mind trapped in a shadow, reduced to possessing animals and lesser wizards.” Severus finally realized what betrayal the Dark Lord was speaking of - the prophecy. The wire grew tighter....

“Had I not ensured my own survival through magic unthinkable to the likes of you,” the Dark Lord said slowly, “I would have been dead by my own curse. You did not know about the measures I took… yet you told me of the prophecy, and asked me to spare the girl.”

Severus was choking now, an animal emitting disgusting noises as air struggled through the narrow passage afforded him by the magic wire. Severus knew - the only thing that made it possible for him to continue to pay rapt attention to his master was magic.

“If I keep you like this for fourteen years, you might know what I, Lord Voldemort, endured, until tonight.” Severus was flushed in sweat and overwhelming panic and he continued to struggle to breathe, coughing, wheezing... yet he knew that he must not attempt to free himself of the magical hold, must not reach for his wand… his field of vision grew black and his power left him, the distress every cell in his body felt forced him to drop from his kneeling position to the floor, his face touching the floorboards, but the Dark Lord’s voice was loud and clear in his mind. Such magic Severus had never seen before.

Then, he was allowed to breathe. He inhaled violently for what must have been whole minutes before his diaphragm caught up to the fact that the magical wire was gone. The Dark Lord gave him the gift of oxygen, of survival. His entire body felt like a hundred hearts beating rapidly under a suit of skin that was drenched in sweat.

He resumed his kneeling position as soon as he could. His robes stuck to his body and his hair stuck to his face.

“Did you know, traitorous filth? Did you arrange for me to kill the girl so that I will be destroyed? Or did you simply figure you will use me, your master, to eliminate your schooldays enemy, whom you could never conquer yourself?”

 _The gods of irony must be protecting me_ , Severus thought, as he hoarsely whispered “No. Never, my Lord,” and meant it with every fiber of his being. Arrange for Lily to die? If Severus had known what were to happen on that night, he would not have done any of the things he did, and that was precisely the thought the Dark Lord read in his mind.

Severus passed the first test.

“Where have you been? If you have been so eager to return to me, I would have expected you to be the first, not the last, to answer my summons.”

 _Love him. You love him. He conquered death itself. He is the most powerful wizard…_ “My Lord, I am your faithful, humble servant, and I regret that I had to delay, but I wanted to return to you with a gift. My master knows how I always sought to set myself apart in his eyes. I could not return to you with nothing. By delaying, I have persuaded the old fool that I have returned on his order. I have secured his trust, and I return to you, my Lord, a spy with my cover intact.”

The Dark Lord appraised him. Was this the truth or a well-rehearsed lie? “Crucio,” he said - the Cruciatus never failed him. Such agony filled Severus’s being that there was nothing but pain to read in his mind. As the pain receded, only select thoughts were allowed to surface: _So powerful. An omnipotent wizard. Like no other… a god._ His soul left his body and watched his prostrate form biting on the edge of his robe to keep from screaming. The very fact of his fear protected him, he knew: The Dark Lord _expected_ fear in the hearts of his followers. He allowed the fear to wash over him, to consume him, and to warp him into whatever the Dark Lord needed - expected - him to be.

As loudly as his tortured body could, Severus declared: “My Lord, you are the greatest wizard, the Deathless Heir of Slytherin. I long to serve you. Your dutiful disciple awaits your order. If you order me to die in repentance for the actions I so deeply regret, I will die without hesitation.”

“How did the boy survive? Did Dumbledore plan this?” was the Dark Lord’s only response to the offering of Severus Snape’s mortal life and immortal soul. Severus was spared having to lie again, as he told the truth: The inexplicable escape was just that. “Never, my Lord. Dumbledore is barely aware of Potter’s unfortunate escape. He could not have planned it.”  
“And the girl?” Lord Voldemort asked. In a stroke of brilliance, Severus answered with a question: “my Master, what girl?”  
“The girl whose affections meant so much to you, you asked me to spare her. Or did you already forget?”  
Severus occluded her, everything about her, everything except the only moments when he truly hated her: When he saw her and James, holding hands, kissing, showing off their stag and doe patronuses… she could have had anybody, but she chose _him._ Severus was nothing to her, a nuisance, and at that moment, under Lord Voldemort’s gaze, she was nothing to him. “A schoolboy’s infatuation,” he said. “A misguided desire. If I may hazard a guess, I believe I only desired the mudblood because James Potter had her.” This might as well have been the truth, and at that moment, it was.

Had the Dark Lord cast another Cruciatus, or was it the last vestige of Severus’s humanity, leaving him in disgust?

The Dark Lord handed Severus a cup of water and allowed him to rise to a more dignified sitting position. He forgave Severus, in his infinite kindness, his great wisdom...

“I will summon you again. Do not be late.”

Severus Snape was a Death Eater again. It was only when he exited the house in Little Hangleton that his own thoughts were allowed to return to him. His position was absurdly precarious - he was a tightrope walker burdened with an unbalanced weight whose name was Harry Potter. To get Harry Potter to safety, he will have to maintain this painful balance, through every gust of wind and every stone thrown at him, and never stray from the narrow, narrow path, and never look down, for there was no safety net for him.

He collapsed on the ground outside the house. The last word on his mind was “friend”, before everything went black.

He came to at Arabella Figg’s doorstep. It appeared that he had inadvertently apparated himself there. She offered him a cup of tea and he told her everything. When he was done, his eyes were glistening and his heart was light and open. He found himself holding her hand tightly and saw in her eyes that she finally believed him. And then he woke up.

It was the first good dream he had in 15 years that wasn’t about Lily.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Another merciless rewrite, befitting a mercilessly painful chapter.


	8. Warm Glow

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Snape admits to a mistake and overcomes prejudice. Again.

The waking world immediately assaulted his every sense.  
The fully visible mark above his left palm made sure of that. How he had slept at all, and how he then had the strength to wake up, he could not fathom.  
But one thing was clear - Dumbledore was right. Again.

He knew he would have to face the Dark Lord again sooner rather than later, and continue to pretend to be eager to serve him again, but the first time nearly killed him. There wasn’t much time. He brought himself to Ms. Figg’s doorstep (finding the time to shoot a dirty look at the Dursley house and telling himself it was to avoid being seen - knowing full well no one wanted less to do with him than the Dursleys).

He knocked, with his finger on his mouth, his long sleeves hiding the indelible disgrace, even though it was late June.  
When the strange woman opened the door, he silently made a dim light shine at the tip of his wand, and quickly extinguished it and handed the wand to her.

Feeling completely exposed, he looked her in the eye.

“Are you coming in or are you trying to get yourself seen?” She asked. “I am”, he replied, following her to the house.

What seemed to come so easy in his dream seemed impossible now. Desperate as he was to let it all out, it felt much more urgent to assess the nature of the person standing before him. But she beat him to it.

“Are you here to spy on me for you-know-who?”  
“The Dark Lord doesn’t know you exist and I’d rather not alert him to this fact”, he replied. But how did she know he was back?

“Dumbledore already warned me. Everyone in the order knows.”

The woman knew too much. How come she casually referred to herself as a member of the order, and yet, he had never heard of her?

“What is your role in the order?” He asked.

“What is yours?”

This was exhausting.  
“Surely, you must know that I joined just before the Dark Lord’s downfall. Officially, I am a spy”.

She next asked: “And what did you mean last time, by ‘bet everything’?”

He reminded her that she did not answer his question, and in a fit of temper suitable for a Gryffindor, she reminded him that he came to her, that according to Dumbledore, the “Order”, which apparently meant Severus, needed her help, and that she, so far, bet nothing on him.

“I gave you my wand, Ms. Figg. Answer the question, please.”

“I can’t do anything with your wand, and you are younger and stronger than I am, not to mention your history. Excuse me if I’m not quick enough to trust for your taste - but very well. Dumbledore asked me to keep watch on Harry Potter on the day he came here. He noticed one of my unusual cats and realized I was linked to the magical world. Officially, I am a babysitter”.

“Why did you agree?” Snape interrogated.

“My turn”, she interrupted. “How do I know you’re trustworthy”?

“If Dumbledore’s word is not enough, I suppose that you do not”.

She smiled.

“You’re mistaken”, she said, to his surprise. “You were able to cast a complex charm with his wand. I know you align yourself with him completely”.

As if a part of him, hitherto denied, long to hear those words, he let out a thin smile as she turned her back to him.

“I just wanted to know what you’ll say. Drinks?”

He asked for some tea.

This was a threat. As much relief as her words contained, he had revealed his true allegiance without intending it - without even considering that he was doing it. True, that’s was what Dumbledore asked - almost ordered him - to do, but it was merely by chance that it was to this woman. He would have to develop a bizarre aversion to letting others use his wand or to using others’ in the future - and the Figg woman already proved that she could not be dismissed.

Just like Dumbledore said, the inner life had a way of revealing itself.

All that thinking took place in the span of two seconds, and then he remembered she hadn’t answered his question.

“Why did you agree?”, he insisted.

“Please,” she said. “Just because I’m not magic doesn’t mean I can’t support a good cause”.

“Why have I never heard the name Figg before?”

“John Figg was my muggle husband.” She said. It was the first time her tone quivered. But she soon resumed the tone of somebody who was owed answers, asking two questions at once: “What do you mean by ‘bet everything’? Am I in danger?”

He answered the second question first. “You’re not in danger by my hands, and by figuring out the wand connection, you made it so that by getting to you, the death eaters will also be getting to me. So - I hope not. You will have to tell me what kind of record the Ministry keeps on squibs.”

Suddenly thinking of his mother, and of how he and the Dark Lord together erased all trace of her and her shameful past except an old picture his then-master advised him to spare, “just in case you will one day have to prove your blood status”, he said: “I’ll know what to do.” He continued: “As for your first question, Dumbledore believes that to fulfill my role for the Order, I need someone to reveal my innermost thoughts and secrets to. I thought it was complete drivel, but recent events proved me wrong.”  
Her complexion showed a rush of blood to her face as she informed him that the Ministry and most everyone else in Wizarding Britain chose to ignore the fact that people like her exist, even to deny it.  
“Wizards are typically supremely arrogant, in my view”.

He did not take kindly to that accusation, thinking his opinion of himself was highly accurate, but he made no further comment on the issue of wizards and their arrogance as she went on. “I suppose it’s for the best in this situation - I won’t be able to defend myself if some dark wizard shows up at my house. And of course, the dear Dursleys never would have let me near little Harry Potter if I had let them see I was connected to the wizarding world.”

So that was why the woman who knew so much had not one book about magic or one moving photograph to show for it. “I see”, he said. “So you know the family well”. He managed to clear his voice and present a neutral expression.  
“Yes,” she said. “I babysat him for these monsters. Unfortunately, they never even allow non-family members to be too kind to him, so I’ve been reduced to talking to him about my cats.”

Clearly, the cats were a salient subject for her - but he also noticed that she was giving information away more clearly now. Perhaps this was a diversion? “What is your maiden name, Ms. Figg?”

She raised an eyebrow. “I expected the word ‘monsters’ to rouse more attention. My magical family is wholly unremarkable and I’d rather not get them involved or exposed, if it’s all the same to you. I lost loved ones in the war like everybody else”.

He could understand where she was coming from, but he took umbrage at her insinuation. “I happen to be keenly aware of what Little Petunia thinks of wizards, and that muggles are capable of hurting wizards does not surprise me in the least”.

Arabella felt like she hit a nerve, but said nothing. She noticed neither one of them touched their tea, which was now cold. She handed her guest his wand and informed him that she would appreciate it if he’d avoid using magic at her house. It was like being an underage wizard again - a ridiculous feeling.

“So you need some kind of therapy, I take it”, she said. Severus was not sure what she meant, but he welcomed the change of subject and the familiar, warm tingle as the wand touched his hand. His mother has been dead for almost two decades, but he found himself thinking of her for the second time that day, and of how she chose to allow her wand and her power to be taken from her.

“It’s sort of muggle mind healing”, Arabella finally volunteered, after thinking for some time.

“My mind is not sick”, he protested.

Arabella didn’t know why she expected a wizard to overcome the prejudice that still plagued the muggles.

“That’s not what I meant”, she said. “Let’s call it a friend who isn’t allowed to tell your secrets and who is often appointed for you by a court.”

He nodded. It was getting late. Arabella mused to herself that their time was up. “You obviously can’t come here regularly, or you will draw too much attention to both yourself and me. Do you know how to use the muggle post?”

She was right, but the process of using the post seemed to him as tedious as it was risky, knowing full well, as he did, that wizards could intercept it. With Arabella’s consent, he enchanted the most mundane looking box he could find to transport objects to and from his office at Hogwarts.

Though he hadn’t breathed a word of Lily or of his mother or of the torture Voldemort put him through, he felt lighter, and he felt a warm glow somewhere in his psyche that he hadn’t felt since he was a boy.

It was terrifying.


	9. James

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Severus's demons won't let him be, and he takes a step back.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> This is the last bit that I have written down, so I'd love some feedback from you guys whether or not I should continue to write and post! Thank you!

In his fitful sleep, he saw James Potter.

 “Are you happy now, Snivelly? Look at that, you got me after all. Are you proud of yourself?”

Fully aware that he was in a dream state and not dead, he begged the spirit of James Potter to leave him alone, at long last. But the spirit taunted him. “Why do you think that you deserve a friend? Look at you, still haven’t learned to use shampoo after all these years? I guess you know who lets just about anyone join his little club.” 

“I was her friend first, you arrogant bastard!” Severus shouted at his schooldays enemy.

“Yes, she told me all about your great friendship, _Sev_. The only reason she ever put up with you was because you were the only other wizard she knew, and then because she felt sorry for you! She was glad when you called her a mudblood, _Sev_ , you gave her an excuse to stop talking to you!”

 “No!” Severus shouted.

“Oh yes! She told me all about your parents and how you couldn’t even get the Muggle to leave your mother alone… She deserved what happened to her, you know, she gave birth to you… I would never let anyone lay a hand on my mother, I would never join you know who, I would never send him after an innocent baby!” Dream James did not relent.

“You were a pampered, spoiled, arrogant toerag from the day you were born! You know nothing about my parents! You know nothing about Lily and me! You’re nothing more than a bully, Potter!”

James laughed. “The bully she chose to marry. And now I’m dead. By the way, you didn’t answer me – are you proud of yourself? Are you happy now?”

“Believe me”, Severus said tearfully, “I am not. Please forgive me. Please tell her to forgive me.”

He woke up. He woke up and the Dark Mark was still there.

He was surprised to find that the enchanted container was not empty.

A small note said:  “I enjoyed your visit yesterday, to my surprise. I guess I missed the intelligent company of humans, not to mention someone who knows the magical world. It has been lonely since my husband died. How are you?”

The dream left a knot in his stomach.

The simple transaction of being asked how he was doing and answering earnestly had been denied him for so long, he did not know how to negotiate it. Sure, there was Dumbledore, but Dumbledore failed to protect Lily,  Dumbledore silenced him when Black almost murdered him, Dumbledore allowed Death Eater ideology to spread through the school when he was a boy, and most crucially, Dumbledore did not care. Severus was only allowed to walk free so he could protect Harry Potter, and he knew it.  But he did not know how to answer the simple question. So he didn’t.

“I thank you for your kindness, Ms. Figg,” he wrote, “but if I were you, I’d reconsider my actions.”

Dream James was right. After all, Severus protected with his love like a basilisk protects with his glance. To be loved by Severus Snape was a death sentence.


	10. Arabella Demented

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Arabella makes a last-ditch effort in the aftermath of the dementor attack on Privet Drive.

Arabella was hurt - and she didn’t like anyone wasting her time, especially not wizards. But she could recognize garden variety resistance when she saw it, and she knew there was not much she could do in her capacity.  
“I’m sorry you feel that way,” she wrote. “I do not wish to reconsider anything. You made quite an impression on me. Is there anything I can do to make you change your mind?”

Severus replied: “It’s not safe for you. Don’t write again.”

She was offended. She wanted to remind him that it was he who needed her, that Dumbledore himself thought so, that she was just fine before and she was just fine now, but even she had her pride - especially when she dealt with wizards. All she wrote was: “I have to respect your wishes, then”.

Then, the dementors came.

The stupid Order was supposed to keep watch, but where were they? It had fallen on her to help Harry and his cousin - thank goodness Harry knew what to do - and to deal with the mess while memories, the worst memories of her life, flooded her being and sucked all joy and hope out of her heart.

And Potter was so slow on the uptake, and his cousin so slow in general, it would have been infuriating if one could be furious during a dementor attack, not to mention that her cover was blown. Now Harry knew, and Dudley. But this was no time for discretion.

As fast as she could, as soon as the two teenagers were home and as soon as the sneak thief Fletcher was on his way to Dumbledore to tell him the news, she disappeared into her house.

Praying that the enchanted box’s counterpart at Hogwarts was within Snape’s field of vision, she wrote him: “If you’re worried about my safety, rest assured, I am not safe. There was a dementor attack at Privet Drive. The scum Fletcher was simply nowhere to be found. Write me at once.”

Oh, this was bad.

A note appeared in her box. Apparently, Severus’s change of heart was not so complete.

“Tell me everything”, the arrogant bastard wrote. But she decided to indulge him.

“Read what I say very closely. Danger is here. We don’t have time for you to learn to trust me. After you tell Dumbledore what happened in case Fletcher fails the order again, of course”.

A piece of parchment bearing just the word “Yes” materialized in front of her.

She continued.  
“The lowlife was supposed to keep watch, but he left to buy some black market cauldrons. I knew he can’t be trusted, so I put one of the cats on it, and as I came back from the shop, he communicated to me that something was wrong. Thankfully, the boy knew what to do and he got rid of them. He was frustratingly slow in understanding what I was trying to explain to him - I don’t envy you for having to teach him! But the Patronus was impressive. Of course he was not as slow as his cousin, though I can’t see why - the worst thing that happened to him was that he ate a grapefruit once! It’s like his mom and dad are so careful to make sure he doesn’t know anything about the magical world, they won’t let him know about the muggle world just to play it safe! Well, I got the two boys home somehow and wrote you right away."

A short while later, another note appeared. “I’ve been sent to inquire into death eater involvement, but the dementors are still under ministry control. Thank you for telling me. Fletcher is indeed untrustworthy, unreliable scum.  
I’m sorry this happened to you.”  
Immediately after, some chocolate appeared in her box. “In case Potter is too selfish to tell you - this will help”.

Arabella found the situation quite frustrating.

“Do I need to go first? Fine. What I saw when the dementors came was my 11th birthday, when the letter didn’t come, and we all knew it never will. I also saw earlier memories - of how my parents desperately tried to make my magic show itself, to no avail. One time, they almost drowned me to death before they let me come up to the surface and breathe! Then I saw my husband die. He was a good man, a kind man, who was open-minded enough to accept my magical family, who stuck up for me when they mocked and teased me, who gave me many happy years. He died too young. And that’s it. That’s everything that happened.”

When Severus read her note, he was consumed with white hot rage, first at Fletcher, then at Arabella’s family, and then at himself. 

“I understand. Your strength of character is impressive”.

She cared, she really did. And she made her choice. He swore to make an effort to trust her.

As she ate the chocolate, Arabella wrote back: “you wouldn’t have praised my character if you’d known how I treated those kids today, but what can I say. It was an emergency.”

Severus was amused. “If you think this will make me think any less of you, then you clearly don’t know me very well just yet. I am far from sympathetic to weak, slow, selfish people, especially Harry James Potter, and I’ll hardly take notice if his cousin lives or dies”.

This surprised Arabella. “Then why did you join the Order?” she asked.

At his office at Hogwarts, Severus sighed. Fear clutched his heart, as if the Dark Lord himself was asking him that.


	11. Lily

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Snape shares one of his secrets.

If someone other than Dumbledore has to know, it might as well be this woman, He thought to himself.

For so long, when he thought about Lily Potter, he thought only about the last weeks of her life. But those last weeks were not why he joined the order.

The floodgates of memories opened as he wrote to Arabella.

“The infernal pest, Harry James Potter, is the spitting image of his father in every way except one. He has the same eyes as his mother Lily. Petunia’s sister.  
Lily was my best and only friend since we were nine years old, when I told her she was a witch. She was a gifted witch, I could tell as soon as I saw her.  
She could do things I couldn’t do - my magic only showed itself when I was scared or angry, but she already controlled it as a small child!

We were inseparable. It was easy to impress her at first with my knowledge of magic and the wizarding world, but she was my friend until our 5th year. She was instantly popular, universally loved, unlike yours truly. But she always had time for her ugly, greasy friend.

When the other kids drew their wands at me, there she was, jumping in front of me to take the hex instead. Have you ever met anyone else who would do this? And she was brilliant, too. If she had lived she would have been incredible. She was incredible.

In the summer holiday after our first year, she actually petrified my bastard father! He deserved it, believe me, but unfortunately, her magic wasn’t strong enough and the spell lifted. The muggle bastard almost took his belt out but he remembered her parents loved her, so when she was gone, he took it out on me instead, but I didn’t care, I was happy.  
When she saw me the next day, she started crying immediately. Over me!

Well, she became more subtle when she used magic on him after that, confunding him about what day of the week it was, or which way was left, or vanishing his belt… and she invited me sleep over at her house almost every night. Even when we weren’t exactly children anymore.

She was the kindest, most generous, beautiful and loving friend I ever had. I can tell you about a hundred times she protected me. Me… I still cannot believe she did that.

Well, you asked. That’s why”.

He summarily vanished a couple of drafts containing the words “I killed her”, “Mudblood”, and one or ten unfavorable mentions of James Potter, and wiped the tears from his eyes.

He thought to himself that he should have figured Lily will sacrifice herself for her son. She jumped between her bat-like, ugly, unlovable friend and those who tried to hurt him so many times it was like second nature. She was in the hospital wing every week sometimes because of him, it seemed.

Of course she would do that for her son. Of course she would one day die because of him. He should have known.

He took a deep breath with his eyes closed and emptied his mind.

There was no use crying over spilled blood.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Please let me know what you think about my story! I am trying to keep this very trauma-informed, so I hope at least one of the people reading this will find some comfort and will feel understood. If any of the terrible things I describe in my story happened to you - you did not deserve it.


	12. The Assault and the Ascent

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Snape grapples with the answer to Arabella's question.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> A chapter told from two points of view, Severus's, and briefly, Voldemort, exploring how vulnerable people are radicalized when the establishment and mainstream society fails them. This is, at least, how I see it. Thank you for reading, and I hope this is enjoyable for you as it is for me to write it! Please let me know what you think!

It took Arabella a while to write back. Severus figured she was somehow on to him again. That she realized what he did to his best friend, and decided to pull away from him (which was not unsound, in his view). Eventually, however, a note appeared.

“I am sorry I took so long to respond. I had to testify in Harry’s hearing before the Ministry – surely you know by now about the travesty of justice I had to help prevent. Honestly, a trial before the entire Wizengamot! And you wonder why the boy is arrogant.

Well, I had to lay low in case the ministry came snooping around. I hope you understand.

Lily sounds like she was a one-of-a-kind person. I am sorry you lost her. I definitely  can’t believe the woman you wrote about and Petunia are related. But I don’t understand how could you join the death eaters in the first place, Severus, if you knew a witch like that?  What happened in your 5th year? Please tell me.”

So she hasn’t figured it out. It looked like he will have to sever this budding friendship all on his own, yet again.

He was overcome with emotions and memories as he struggled to keep the images and fragments of experiences he hadn't thought about in years from surfacing. Finally, he hung his head and knew he will just have to feel them this time.

Three wedges 

The first wedge between Severus and Lily was driven between them when they were sorted. She was a Gryffindor, he – a Slytherin. When he first sat at the Slytherin table, a warm hand welcomed him – that of Slytherin Prefect Lucius Malfoy.

Lucius was adamant about making sure all his housemates were proud of who they were – ambitious, cunning, clever. He was unlike anyone Severus had ever met before. He had everything – everything Severus never even dared to dream of for himself, and he recognized that the boy who came from a magical family that was on the brink of extinction,  whose surviving members were disgraced, who had secondhand everything (or rather, had secondhand or simply did without), who wore mismatched clothes, was in dire need of Slytherin pride.

Lucius had wealth, looks, and a family so honorable and steeped in magic history, so loving, and so whole, and yet he chose to invest his attention and energy in little Severus, of all people. It was another relationship he did not feel he deserved - a mentor, and such a noble one at that! - and he cherished it. The only issue was that Lucius did not appreciate the company the young Slytherin kept – the Gryffindor mudblood Evans, as he called her. He accepted, even appreciated, everything else about him, however – his talent, that made itself obvious very soon to those who knew where to look (Professor Slughorn not among them, unfortunately), his ambition, the way he threw himself into his schoolwork and took on incredible workloads without complaint. He was one of the first men who treated Severus kindly and the very first wizard who did that, and he was everything one could hope to be, in Severus’s opinion.

Of course, Lucius could not devote that much time to Severus between his schoolwork, prefect duties, and his relationship with his fiance, and in Severus’s third year, he had already graduated and was seeking a new path in life anyway. A path, Lucius used to write to him, to a world where people like his father could never raise their vulgar hands on people like him again. They remained in touch, and Severus was even invited to the wedding with the beautiful and equally pure and distinguished Narcissa. “You do not have to bring us a wedding gift, Silly,” they insisted. Lucius let him borrow dress robes to the wedding, that were so elegant and so soft, and so expensive, Severus hardly dared to move a muscle as every other guest danced and drank, lest he spill something, tear something… but not everybody felt like he was someone they will invite to their wedding one day. This much was obvious.

In Severus’s fifth year, Sirius Black told Severus how to enter the Shrieking Shack, and Severus did something - another thing he was to regret forever - and swallowed the bait.

Did he expect a werewolf? He suspected it, but Lily said he was mad. Did he expect a full-grown werewolf, unchained and hungry? Lupin, the tamest, most timid of the four? Were lycanthropes not supposed to be feral even in their human form? Even as an adult, Severus did not know how to answer that. It did not matter what he expected at 16, because a raging werewolf was what he got. To be more accurate, a raging werewolf almost got _him._

The predator’s head turned at an impossible speed in the direction of the entrance to the shack. Its yellow eyes focused on Severus, its nose sniffed the victim that walked into its cage alone… a string of saliva stretched between its fangs, and it let out a low, horrible growl. The bites it uncontrollably inflicted on itself left parts of its body bloodied and furless, and it was sure to inflict just such a bite on Severus, the frozen prey that stood there stupidly, thinking God knows what, but definitely not “I was right”. Just before the dark creature attacked, James Potter shouted: “Move, Idiot!”, and shot spell after spell, and dragged Severus, who was still blinking stupidly, away.

“I’m going to Dumbledore,” Severus announced, panting. That was his second mistake, as he would tell himself for months after the fact - he should have pretended to be grateful and gone straight to Lily. But he did not. It might have been the stupidest decision of his life thus far - stupider even than going into the Shrieking Shack in the first place.

James tried to stop him, but without his gang, without his many admirers, he could not. “Then I am coming too!” James cried. Together, they waited for Dumbledore to let them into his office, neither one letting the other out of his sight.

“Tell me what happened,'' the Headmaster asked calmly. James started talking first. When he talked to teachers, “Snivellus” became “Severus”, and there was no mention of his nose or of shampoo to be found for miles. “Professor,” he said with just the right blend of alarm and confidence, “I learned that he was going to try to enter the Shrieking Shack, and I got worried, and ran after him.” James Potter’s disregard for the truth was equal to his disregard for rules.

“And who do you think told me how to get there?! And, and, what did I find there, do you imagine?” Severus, the outraged teenager who foolishly assumed murder was still illegal, shrieked, bug-eyed and scandalized.

Dumbledore sighed. “I know what you encountered there, Master Snape. Master Potter, how did you know he was going down there?”

Potter did not answer this one so quickly. He weighed his options. Most of them were not good. “It was Black!” Severus shouted, before James could come up with another half-truth. 

Dumbledore replied, looking at both of them: “You must appreciate that this is very severe. Only Mr. Lupin was meant to know how to calm down the Whomping Willow. I suppose it is natural that he trusted his friends”. Then, he said nothing for a while. “Return to your beds,” he instructed them, finally. “I will consult with Professor McGonagall and Professor Slughorn and we will reach a decision tomorrow morning, when we have had a chance to calm down. I must demand that you both be discrete, until then.”

Outside Dumbledore’s office, James said: “You disgusting tattle-tale, no wonder no one likes you. This is how you repay me for saving your life? I already regret it. Tell anyone, and I will feed you to him myself.”

A speechless Severus ran to his dorm, whispered the password, and covered himself up to his eyes. A sleepless Severus stared at the ceiling and thought to himself - _I have to tell Lily. They made it a prefect, a prefect!_

He washed his terrified face hours later, and marched to the Headmaster’s office. Potter and Black were already there - on time, for the first time in their lives, as were Professor McGonagall and Professor Slughorn.

Was that the moment he was condemned? They got away with it. McGonagall promised to handle the punishment. Slughorn, his own head of house, was occupied first and foremost with the welfare of students he wanted to welcome to his precious Slug Club.  
They were above the rules, and Severus was beneath them. So far beneath them, in fact, that he was punished, despite “almost being murdered” not being expressly prohibited anywhere that he knew of. Dumbledore forbade him to talk about it, and whether or not he actually put a silencing charm on him made no difference - he was in his O.W.L. year, and he was not going to get himself expelled for anything before he was fully qualified. He knew full well what life was like for the wandless. Ultimately, Severus blamed himself - how could he have been stupid enough to trust Black not to try to murder him?

Soon enough, Severus found out that Potter was not held up to the same standard of discretion - he was free to blab to his heart’s content. He did not implicate Black or Lupin, but he made himself out to be the hero, Snape's noble savior. Naturally, he neglected to mention that he could not beat Severus one on one.

It was proof. He was born to be hated. He was _less_ , less wealthy, less popular, less attractive, less than a _werewolf._ He was nobody. Nothing. Whether he lived or died mattered so little he could not even talk about it, not even with Lily,  and Sirius did not even get suspended, never apologized ( _Not even when Dumbledore forced us to shake hands last year,_ 36 year old Severus thought bitterly). He wondered who would have cared if he had actually died. He wondered if Dumbledore would have reacted differently if the roles were reversed – if the victim had been Gryffindor and the assailant, a Slytherin. Dumbledore drove the second wedge between Severus and Lily. Lucius, his mentor and role model, was gone. Severus felt more alone than he ever did before.

But Lily was still his friend, even though he was growing increasingly paranoid and jumpy, even though he was suddenly secretive around her and inexplicably rancorous. Through all that, she was still his friend. When she took the hexes that were meant for him, she wore her boils and her bizarrely long toenails and her other various temporary disfigurements with pride – a privilege that he felt was exclusive to those who were naturally beautiful, to those no one actually _intended_ to curse. She was beautiful and brave, and he was an ugly coward who let his friend get hurt for him. As he could not share the full extent of what he was going through with her, he worried that she too was growing to think him a coward, and his resentment continued to swell. That she indeed thought that was confirmed when he tried, desperately, to warn her, and she said she heard that James saved him from “whatever is down there.” _But she is still your friend_ , he used to remind himself in those days. _And she still hates James._

In their Defense Against the Dark Arts O.W.L., they were required to list five signs that identify werewolves. Severus could think of fifty, at the top of his head, including: They are friends with murderers who defy discipline. They will not remember it if they almost kill you. They are more important than the lives of impoverished Slytherin half-bloods.

Severus was not sure if this was the universe itself playing a joke on him or an easy O. He knew the answer less than an hour later.

James attacked him, unprovoked. He disarmed him, immobilized him, choked him with soap… Lily’s voice cut through the air. “Leave him ALONE!” she shouted at James. Severus tried to take advantage of the respite, and crawled toward his wand while Potter, ever the paragon of virtue and fine manners, pestered her to go out with him. Severus needed much less than that to be inspired to try out his Sectumsempra. He was rewarded with being attacked with another of his own spells. He was hanging in the air by his ankle. Did Lily smile at his humiliation before she demanded James to let him down? Maybe this was why James agreed, and Severus collapsed in a heap on the floor… and Black did not even give him a chance to untangle his robes before petrifying him. Lily’s wand was out, now, and evidently, a chance to look good in front of her was worth releasing “Snivellus” from the full body bind to James. “There you go. You’re lucky Evans was here, Snivellus -”  
Severus could not take it anymore –  his emotions got the better of him, and, preferring to be petrified by James Potter forever than to owe his Gryffindor Muggle-born friend one more debt she was too beautiful, blissful, and beloved to bother to collect, he said the terrible word that drove the third and final wedge between them. He could have ran away. Did he stick around for a chance to apologize to present itself? Was it because he felt like he had just _Sectumsemptra_ -ed his own heart? Whatever the reason, It made no difference. He found himself suspended in the air and exposed moments later. Stupid.

Lord Voldemort 

Lucius Malfoy brought the Dark Lord a new follower. It was an unusual choice for him – a half-blood of slender means, who seemed to be a weak, petty, bitter child bent on becoming a weak, petty, bitter man. But Lucius insisted that he had potential, and the young wizard proved knowledgeable and apt. He also  shared an animosity toward Muggles, the Muggle-borns, and Albus Dumbledore. He was extremely malleable – eager to learn the dark arts, intelligent enough to talk himself into believing anything, with everything to prove and nothing to lose.

In the right light, his desperation and weakness could be seen as an asset, as determination and drive. Voldemort believed that his hands were indeed the right ones.

Malfoy knew what he was doing by bringing this young man to his master.

The Dark Lord was very pleased as the 16-year-old received the Mark. He already promised him he will help clear his mother’s name, even if it meant getting rid of it altogether, and help him get his revenge and what was duly his.

With the right kind of attention, this boy could go  from powerless, poor and pathetic, to proud, impressive, and immensely powerful. If he was going to get the attention that could turn him from what he was into a formidable wizard from anyone, Lord Voldemort figured, it better be from someone none other than him.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> This chapter is dedicated to the many idiots of Reddit who argue that anything about the werewolf attack or Snape's Worst Memory is defensible in the remotest. You people truly scare me. I rewrote it especially for you in the hope that it makes some things clearer.  
> It is also dedicated to the tireless warriors who are repeatedly forced to point out that murder is wrong and assault is also quite wrong. You know who you are, and I appreciate the hell out of you.


	13. Faith

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Sorry for leaving you hanging for so long, and for the short chapter! I know how the rest of the story goes, pretty much, but I didn't have time to write it all down yet. My insinuation that Dudley is gay is tribute to paganaidd and her wonderful fic, entitled "Dudley's memories", which I recommend wholeheartedly to everyone!

He put quill to parchment not knowing what he was going to write.  
“To make a long story short”, he started, “I called her a mudblood in a moment of weakness and she didn’t accept my apology. We weren’t friends anymore, so I had no reason not to join him.”  
It was laconic, and it was somehow dishonest despite not containing a single falsehood, but it was all that he could bring himself to reveal.

Many versions of the truth swam in his mind. Because Lord Voldemort manipulated him - played him life a fiddle. Because he wanted to be important, to be like Lucius. Because he wanted the muggles, and one among them in particular, to pay. Because Lily left him. Because he was a bad man.

He emptied his mind, with great effort, even though no one was using legilimency on him. “It’s OK, you don’t have to tell me”, the next note said.

“Whatever it was, I know you have changed.”

This woman was determined to view him in a good light, and it comforted and incensed him in equal measures. She didn’t know. She made her mind up to believe him, to believe in him, with naivete that could get her killed.

“Dudley Dursley reached out to me today,” an unbidden message said. “That encounter with the Dementors shook him, and of course, he didn’t feel comfortable talking to his parents about it. I had to explain what they were to him, assured him that Harry did not produce their effect, just the opposite, in fact, and told him I didn’t think we need to worry about another attack. The experience left the poor boy positively crushed, Severus!  
That feeling never entirely left him, I can tell, and I can assure you he has been eating chocolate.

From what he tells me about what he saw, I don’t think he is quite the normal boy his parents were hoping he was, but I told him there is nothing wrong with that, or with being magic, or with not being magic, for that matter. I think that’s his only chance against Dementors, if they come again.  
It’s how I was able to function during the attack - I already processed all of my worst memories. They don’t hurt me as much.

I hope you feel better.”

Of what concern the muggle boy was to him, Severus did not know, and did not care to ask.  
As much as he enjoyed picturing Petunia panicking and shrieking, he did not have time to waste.

Glad, for a change, that Potter hadn’t been expelled, he quietly braced himself for another year of keeping him alive, and wondered what miserable excuse for a Defense Against the Dark Arts teacher Dumbledore was going to inflict upon the school next.


	14. Snape's Unexpected Tasks

The new Defense teacher was as offensive as they come. In the kindest of terms, she could only be described as a humanoid toad with the Dark Lord’s morals and a blast-ended skrewt’s charisma, and this was how the ministry chose to punish the school for Dumbledore’s refusal to toe the line.

Severus was positive that this year’s students won’t know how to defend themselves against an itching hex when she was done with them. He was certain he will end up having to teach Potter’s class for an extra year to catch them up on everything the incompetent, sickeningly sweet tyrant in pink was failing to teach them, and that was in the best case scenario in which they all survive. _Maybe Dumbledore will let me kill myself when the Dark Lord is defeated_ , he thought to write to Arabella.

If he was honest with himself, he was growing very fond of her, and armed with her unwavering faith in him, he found it easier to continue to deceive the Dark Lord.

He didn’t give Dumbledore the satisfaction of telling him they ended up establishing a sort of friendship after all, but Dumbledore noticed his spy was able to meet with Voldemort regularly, and always came back to tell the tale.

But then, it was almost Christmas. It was almost Christmas, and Arthur Weasley was attacked. Weasley was attacked, and Dumbledore told Severus he was now also in charge of teaching the Harry Potter the subtle art of Occlumency.

His head started to spin immediately with possibilities of how this could go wrong. For one thing, he would have to somehow get another complex branch of magic through the thick skull he doubtlessly inherited from his father. Second, there was no way to hide this from the Dark Lord - he will be seeing the lessons through Potter’s eyes. He had just realized he and Potter were linked, and what an incredible asset this was.

But Dumbledore insisted. He still seemed to have very little regard for Snape’s own safety, but who could blame him. Severus accepted the order - there truly seemed to be no other way.

He and Arabella came up with a plan together. They decided that after informing Potter of the new class on his schedule, he would rush straight to the Dark Lord and do his best to present this as a victory. They met in person to plan how they will do that. They practiced their premeditated lies and prepared for every line of questioning they could dream up.

Severus walked into the house in Little Hangleton, smiling ear to ear, maintaining the expression of a man barely able to contain himself with excitement. “You will never guess what the old fool asked me to do, my Lord. He thinks I can train Potter to close his mind, to protect it from you!”

“Does he now.” His master replied.

“He seems to believe me able to vest in him abilities I myself do not possess. He might as well have asked me to teach Potter to make a philosopher’s stone. Don’t you see what this means?” He asked, feigning disappointment and confusion.

“Enlighten me.”

“He truly believes I am fooling you, my Dark Lord! He is handing the boy over to me to uncover everything he knows, to assess his every weakness and hand it to you on a platter! We will be foolish to let this opportunity go to waste!”

Under his slits, Voldemort smiled a thin smile. “You continue to serve me well, Severus.”

“Thank you, my Lord”.

“But I ask that you do not let this new role distract you from your primary task,” he said, ominously.

 _Getting the second half of the prophecy,_ Severus remembered, after a moment of confusion.

He and Arabella did not practice this scenario - that the Dark Lord will find the news simply uninteresting.

Fear crept through him, consuming him with a chill that went from his lungs to his extremities. His master drank the fear, devoured it as if eager to make up for the long years he spent without a body, feared by no one.

It was only in the presence of true fear that he seemed warmer, more human.

Of course Severus did not like thinking about the dratted prophecy. It instantly and mercilessly transported him to the hallway outside Dumbledore’s room at the Hog’s Head, where he crouched like a vile, despicable insect or small predator, eager to deliver the news to his master and to finally prove his value to him. The first time he felt _lucky._   

As he remembered this awful moment, he looked at himself from above, full of loathing and contempt for the eager, gleeful, ugly man he saw in his mind’s eye, eavesdropping at the door.

The Dark Lord must have sensed the shame and remorse that were clutching at his servant’s throat and viscera, as his servant’s eyes looked down.

“Severus,” he said with false kindness.

 “I am so ashamed, my Lord. It is my deepest regret that I brought the prophecy to you, knowing what it did to you. I cannot apologize enough”.

His eyes glistened.

“Get me the second half, and you will be forgiven.” The Dark Lord was never so dangerous as when he was kind.

Faking profound gratitude, devotion, and love made Severus feel as if he was corrupting his own soul as he uttered the filthy lies, and he wondered if Dumbledore appreciated that this part was the most truly frightful thing about becoming a Death Eater again.

In his office, he wrote to Arabella.

“Once again, you prove to be a more skilled legilimens than the Dark Lord himself, as I have yet to fool you once. Our plan was a success, but not for the reasons we expected. The boy’s mind seems of little consequence to the Dark Lord, and as much as I might agree with him in that respect, I was unsuccessful in getting him to forget the other task he assigned me.”

It was finally time to come clean to her. He needed her to know.

“As a Death Eater, I was the one who sent him after the Potters. I eavesdropped on a seer making a prophecy about a boy who will grow up to defeat the Dark Lord and I delivered it to my master without hesitation.”

“It was you? After everything? How could you do that to Lily?” Arabella asked.

"I didn’t know it might be her. How could I know? I tried to stop him as soon as I realized, but obviously, I failed”.

He stared and stared at the box, waiting for comfort for his inconsolable heart to materialize in front of him. It was when he thought of that moment that he knew he was beyond forgiveness. Sirius was able to resist the Dementors because he knew he was innocent (of betraying the Potters, at least). Even Wormtail only sold his friends out to Lord Voldemort after being tortured. The two complete lowlifes hadn’t rushed happily to kill Lily Potter, brimming with pride. Only Severus had this to his name. 

Arabella knew honesty had to be met with honesty, and finally, there was the truth. The real reason he switched sides. It was guilt, not love. Love alone could never explain his willingness to protect a boy he truly hated at risk to his own life. She was appalled. The wizard she had come to believe in, even love, sent the most powerful dark wizard in history to kill a baby. This was beyond what she could believe, even of faithful death eaters.

Yet, despite herself, she felt profound sorrow for the young man who lost so much, so soon, whose desperate bargain to find his place in the world cost him so dearly.

Severus was growing tired of staring down the box, but finally, it was no longer empty. Her note read: “Goes to show you how arrogant wizards are. Not to brag, but Muggles kill infants successfully every day with pillows, that don’t backfire quite as catastrophically as the Killing Curse. Are you OK?”

She never failed to surprise him. He could understand disgust, false attempts at absolution, utter refusal to ever communicate with him again. But he did not expect plain concern, and certainly not a joke.

Too surprised to worry about the second half of the prophecy, he finally felt relief.

“In the sense that I got our lie past him, yes. Otherwise, I am still rather shaken. I had to tell him the rush of remorse I felt when he mentioned the prophecy was about what happened to him. I am disgusted with myself.”

“Well done!” she wrote. “You’re very quick on your feet!”

“So, you’re simply going to say nothing about how I killed Lily.”

“I find it appalling, Severus, but you seem to hate yourself enough for the two of us, so what can I say?”

“You can always throw out your box”, he suggested.

“If 21 year old Severus had communicated with a Squib at all, I most certainly would have, but as it were, I do not wish to stop communicating with you now, though I admit I surprise myself.”

 _That makes two of us_ , he thought.


	15. The Second Half

Together, Dumbledore and Severus decided it was safer for Severus not to know what the second half of the prophecy said.

There was no telling what that knowledge might mean to Voldemort.

But he had to look like he was trying.

 

Having Dumbledore make something up was not wise, as if and when Voldemort got his hands on the real prophecy, he was sure Severus will find himself right next to the Longbottoms at the long-term care ward.

Dumbledore believed, and Severus agreed, that the best course of action was to have Voldemort continue to pursue the prophecy, and not whoever he thought it was about. “He must continue to fear what he does not know”, as Dumbledore put it.

 

Severus pestered Trelawney, knowing it was as futile as it was unpleasant, as she did not remember making the prophecy in the first place and certainly could not make it again on command.

He drank gobletfuls of memory enhancing potion, knowing it was more futile still, as there was nothing to remember except himself, rushing to deliver the news to his master.

 

When every other course of inaction failed, just as he intended it to, he had to inform Dumbledore that “I must seem to attempt to be getting it out of you, Headmaster, or my loyalty will be questioned.”

 

Then it came to him. Leaving Dumbledore perplexed for once, he rushed out of his office and ran to his own. He came back holding the duplicate wand he chucked in a random drawer after his frustrating first encounter with Figg, and thanked his own frustration for hanging on to it.

 

As he re-entered Dumbledore’s office, he looked him straight in the eyes and gave him the signal to read his mind. He focused on the message:  _ Follow my lead. You are safe. _

 

His expression and body language, however, were nothing if not hostile.

“Give me the second half, you old fool, or suffer the consequences.” He said quietly. “Do you think I fear you? I serve only Him!” He rolled up his sleeve and pointed at the Mark.

 

“You cannot have it. We discussed it, Professor. Please put your wand away and think of what you are doing.” Dumbledore was stern, yet his tone suggested the possibility of a second - a third - chance.

 

“Crucio!”, Severus shouted, aiming inches away from Dumbledore. Looking directly into his eyes, he tried to communicate to him:  _ Don’t look so confused. Try to look scared _ .

 

“Did you miss on purpose?” Dumbledore asked, as his mind told Severus,  _ If I was really dueling you, I would be calm and confident until I had no other choice _ .

“I won’t, next time. Tell me.” Severus said, trying to sound greedy.

_ Shield charm, on two _ .

“Final warning, Headmaster. One. Two. Crucio!”

 

He aimed straight at Dumbledore’s heart and as soon as he finished the incantation, he voluntarily collapsed as believably as he could, bit down on his hand as if to avoid screaming, and inhaled and exhaled loudly. The display of powerlessness was real enough that sweat appeared on his brow, and he wiped it as the backfired  _ curse _ wore off.

 

“I learned the unforgivable curses from the Dark Lord himself, do you think I never felt one, first hand?” He asked the Headmaster, in a mocking tone.

“Or are you questioning my willingness to inflict harm on the person who saved me from Azkaban? You are older, you are slower, and you are on the losing side. I will get you.”  _ I am going to petrify you, and I will succeed _ , he thought, thanking the laws of magic that having your own mind read and reading someone else’s mind appeared to be one and the same from the outside.

 

“Pertificus Totalus!” he shouted. Dumbledore was still. He gazed deep into the unmoving man’s eyes. “Give it to me. There is no need for speaking. You need only to think it. No? Perhaps this will jog your memory. Crucio!” he said, the duplicate wand literally touching Dumbledore’s chest. Deciding on the spot not to reveal before the Dark Lord that pain masks anything that can be read in a mind, he said aloud: “I know this part, obviously. Get on with it”.  _ You obliviated yourself, because you do not trust me _ , he thought. “What is this? Why are you alone in your room at the Hog’s Head? Someone obliviated you. Or you obliviated it yourself. I see. You are not unclever. But the Dark Lord will get it - if not from you, then from the hall of prophecy itself. Remember that. Or not.”

He pointed the wand and cried, “Obliviate”, sat in his chair, and pretended to release Dumbledore from his immobilization.

 

“Are you alright, Headmaster?” he asked him sounding very clearly overly concerned. “You fainted.”

“Must have not eaten enough today. I’m just fine.” Dumbledore replied, looking confused.

“I’ll ask one of the elves to get you something on my way out.”

 

As he went over the memory of this fight in his mind to solidify it for the Dark Lord to observe, he made sure nothing but hatred and defiance, followed by pure frustration, accompanied the memory. He prayed that it will work with what little faith he had.

 

When he and Dumbledore met next, Dumbledore said he was surprised Severus kept the useless object. His office usually contained only the necessities. “I suppose it wasn’t as useless as it first appeared”, he said, as a thin smile appeared on his face without him noticing.


	16. Snape's Worst Memory, Exposed

As Voldemort believed his servant to have failed to extract the prophecy from Dumbledore, he focused his attention on drawing Harry Potter to the hall of prophecy somehow. He had to use the mental connection between them, and he ordered his servant to stop the boy from occluding.

Fortunately, even with dedicated effort, Potter proved a very poor student; despite the potential he showed, he seemed to enjoy his little visions. “I assure you, there is nothing I could do to make him close his mind even if I tried. The boy does not understand the basics, the most rudimentary forms of Occlumency. He lets his thoughts and emotions out at the slightest provocation.”

It was true. Potter’s most recent attempt at hiding something resulted in Dumbledore being sacked. It was preposterous.

He didn’t know if it was a problem of motivation or of skill, but Potter’s performance in class could only suggest that his link to the Dark Lord gave him some pleasure, even though he claimed otherwise.

Nothing, however, could prepare him for the near disaster Potter almost brought upon both of them.

He left the classroom to help Umbridge release his student from the bathroom, and came back to find Harry’s head deep in the Pensieve.

His life flashed before his eyes. He was white in the face, his legs weighed a ton, and he didn’t know if it was seconds or hours before he was able to move and retrieve his reckless student’s head from the Pensieve. He scanned Harry’s mind to learn what he had seen, and realized they were seconds away from a true catastrophe. If he hadn’t stopped Harry, Harry would have seen - and showed Voldemort - Severus begging Lily for forgiveness, after calling her that terrible name. He would have shown the Dark Lord Severus’s true allegiance.

Their lessons had come to an end, as far as Severus was concerned. Dumbledore was gone from the school, so he did not feel like he had to answer to him.

Experience taught him that the quickest way to “process” his experiences, as Arabella called it, and to render them harmless, was to write to her. He did not want to feel the fear and humiliation the stupid, insolent, reckless, ungrateful boy made him feel for one more second.

His white hands shook as he tried to write.

_ It’s OK _ , he said to himself, trying to steady his quill.  _ Nothing happened. Nothing happened _ .

“No matter how little I think of this child, he always finds new ways to put his life at risk, and mine, to boot”, he wrote.

“I have been assigned to teach him to close his mind. I had to store particular memories in a magical container to keep them hidden from him as he was learning, including memories that give away everything, betray everything about me and his mother, about you.

I had to leave the classroom briefly, and I came back to find him nearly shoulder-deep in my memories, about to feed the Dark Lord everything!”

It took her some time, too much time, too much time in which to pace back and forth, keep his anger down, and struggle with the memories Potter had seen, but finally, she answered.

Sadly, she was being uncharacteristically thick about it all.

“What do you mean by “feed the Dark Lord?” And how can you blame a 15 year old for doing precisely what he is not supposed to do?”

Potters were universally held above the law. When he did things he was not supposed to do, he remembered acutely that he was duly punished for them, even if fate itself had to intervene.

“Harry Potter and the Dark Lord are connected. It’s a result of the failed killing curse. This is why I must teach him to close his mind, to prevent the Dark Lord from taking advantage of this fact and luring him into a trap or possessing him. As for his natural curiosity, I believe he  ought to apply it to his school work. He knows I am a spy, he knows Dumbledore trusts me, so if you ask me, he had better filled his mind with thoughts of his own instead of helping himself to mine! Otherwise, I don’t suppose you have a spare witch lying around, who will take a killing curse that is meant for you, should the Dark Lord learn that you have been helping me lie to him?”

As he wrote her in a quick succession of messages, he finally felt the fear begin to fade. Slightly.

“I was not aware. I am sorry.” She wrote back.

He did not bother to respond.

He should have realized. Momentarily, he forgot that Voldemort was right there with them in that classroom. Whether it was Voldemort’s own mistrust of Snape that overcame Harry, or Harry’s own “curiosity”, he happily reported to the Dark Lord that he will no longer be teaching him Occlumency.


	17. Severus's Respite

After Severus banished Harry Potter from his office at the end of that final Occlumency lesson, Severus tried very hard to switch sides again. Protecting Harry Potter was not a worthwhile pursuit for him anymore, if indeed it ever was. He decided he would be better off forsaking this task, which was as dangerous as it was thankless. If he had to kiss the edges of the Dark Lord’s robe, he might as well do it in earnest, he figured. But he could not. Every time he considered it, he invariably saw Lily’s eyes, looking at him through the despicable child, saying:  _ I died for him. I love him. Please help me protect him _ . He could not deny her. Not even as he knew the Dark Lord was looking at him through the same eyes.

The only way to continue to hate Harry Potter in peace was to recommit to his protection.

Harry had continued on his mission to putting himself and everyone he knew at risk by getting his ridiculous friends trapped in Umbridge’s office, where the toad had threatened to poison them, and where Crabbe almost choked the hapless Longbottom. Luna Lovegood was looking infuriatingly serene throughout this entire development. What have they got themselves into this time?

Harry looked into Severus’s eyes, pleading with him to read his mind. Severus did not. His classified memories were stored safely in his head, and he preferred to avoid eye contact with Voldemort if he could help it. Harry was alive, and that was all Severus felt he needed to know.

Then, the idiot boy shouted out his message - “They’ve got Padfoot at the place where it’s hidden!”

Severus might have been committed to protecting Harry Potter, but he was not committed to protecting the great and mighty Order of the Phoenix, as far as he was concerned. Least of all, Sirius Black. As he left the room, he wondered what was compelling him to check that Black was safe in his rather luxurious hidey-hole, a courtesy he was quite sure Black would not have extended to him. The only reason not to simply let him die like a coward was that he, too, would do anything for James Potter’s son. But Black’s commitment to protecting Harry was negated by the fact that Sirius Black was a liability in terms of keeping the boy alive in and of himself - Harry seemed as willing to risk himself for Sirius as Sirius was willing to risk himself for him. It was emphatically  _ not  _ as touching as these two must have thought it was.

Severus felt he did much more than his fair share by making sure Sirius was safe and sound at his home - the home Sirius complained about being trapped in incessantly, the fact that it was a veritable palace compared with Severus’s childhood home notwithstanding. In fact, Severus felt he deserved applause for not killing Sirius himself, just for that.

But it was Bellatrix who did it. He was not there to witness his school-days enemy die, but he heard Bellatrix was magnificent. It was a pathetic end for a pathetic man, and Severus was glad Sirius finally fulfilled his true calling, as he should have done 14 years ago, and died for James.

Not only that, but the prophecy was destroyed. It was the best possible outcome for Severus - Lord Voldemort no longer had any chance at all of finding out what it said unless he managed to get it out of Dumbledore himself, and Severus was spared having to ever think about the prophecy again.

Lucius’s failure meant that Severus was promoted, rather than punished for not showing up - or punished for his part in the farcical failure this operation had become.

Most importantly, Harry Potter was still alive, despite the increasing proclivity to go on suicide missions he demonstrated all year.

Relief washed over him. He was not afraid for the first time in months. He was light, the dull aches that had accompanied him for so long he had forgotten they were there had left him.

Finally,  _ finally _ , something went his way.

To his chagrin, Arabella refused to believe him when he told her he had no regrets whatsoever about the way it all worked out.

He  _ tried _ to protect Sirius, but he was not going to get worked up about failing - and he felt entitled to his grudge considering everything that he had given up on in his life.

Her obvious displeasure with his refusal to grieve Black hurt him like a dagger.  _ Not her too. Not another friend, another ally, who does not see him for what he was. _ She was the most perceptive person he had ever met in his entire wretched life, surely, she knew Sirius, she must have figured him out… then he remembered. He never told her. Nobody told her who Sirius was - how was she to know? He suddenly felt obligated to help ease her pain by letting her know exactly what kind of man Sirius Black, who died of his own cruelty and arrogance, had been, the life he led. He inhaled, his first deep breath in a world that was suddenly just a little less Black. 

When she finished reading the letter that started with the words “I was not entirely truthful when you asked me what happened in my fifth year…” that described a Sirius Black Arabella had never seen before, she got over her own grief within minutes. “I never knew. Good riddance,” she wrote. Her handwriting showed that she was more shaken by Severus’s account than by the man’s death. Severus nearly kissed the parchment that appeared in this office. He could not help but notice that when the Dark Lord used legilimency these days, it was, invariably, an intrusion, a violation, defilement, a form of mental torture that forced him to contort his psyche so that the emotions the Dark Lord explored in him could be attributed to the right memories, and to them alone. Failure was betrayal, and betrayal was death. Yet when the Squib got him to release his innermost secrets through her entirely non-magical methods, it was quite the opposite: She shared his burden, his emotions were his own and yet so much easier to bear. He was still walking a tightrope, still carrying a load that seemed to want them both to plummet to their death, but the wind that whipped him was softer, quieter… If Severus had wept at all after Sirius Black died, he wept tears of joy.

The school year was over, and with it, his workload was suddenly diminished. He was no longer busy teaching, protecting those he could from the tyrant in pink, deliberately failing to get the prophecy, or any other secondary task. As Lord Voldemort's sudden second-in-command, he was as safe as he could hope to be.

Severus should have kept in mind that it was when the Dark Lord was kind that he was to be feared the most.


	18. Draco

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Another 16 year old makes a fateful decision.

Draco Malfoy’s life was supposed to be different. Not that it was bad - in fact, there was no one else he’d rather be. He was, after all, a Malfoy. But the world his parents thought they were bringing him into was not the world he lived in, and he felt it acutely from the moment he could remember himself.

When he was born, his father was second in command to the greatest wizard in the world - in history. That was the situation he was supposed to be in - nothing less.

He was meant to be born into a world he could one day conquer and change.

In the world he was meant to be in, his magic had the potential to make it so he would never die.

When he was a year old, the Dark Lord fell. It was inexplicable. It was terrible. They were still an important family, but it was not enough. At one year old, baby Draco’s life changed forever.

And he was going to be classmates with the boy who somehow made this happen.

Because of this boy, his father had to claim he was imperiused, his mother’s sister was in Azkaban, and the family lost a fortune in donations and bribes, just so they could show themselves among respectable wizards again. All of his happened to them, and Potter was famous and everyone fawned over him just because he was Potter.

His father always said they were all a bunch of hypocrites. Everyone believed wizardkind was superior, everyone knew it runs in families - they just didn’t say it. Everyone knew the muggles hated them, persecuted them, forced them into hiding, and everyone knew that muggle- _ borns _ jeopardized the wizarding world because so many muggles now knew about it. They just refused to put two and two together and come to the only logical conclusion, or maybe they preferred to leave the unsavory business of controlling the muggles and their accidental wizard and witch offspring to others - people like the Malfoys, while they got to look noble.

His father always went on about the slippery slope. “Say you accept the muggle borns as wizards, what’s next? Dumbledore already staffs the school with squibs and half giants!”

Fine. If the rest of the wizarding world wanted to believe Harry Potter will change what needed changing, so be it. The Ministry was full of morons.

The Malfoy family found its way to the top once, and it will again, with or without the Dark Lord.

Draco met Harry before the first day of school, at Madam Malkin’s. He tried to steer him in the right direction - after all, if Harry Potter was indeed the Dark wizard some people were making him out to be, it seemed wise to get on his good side. But just because Harry was famous didn’t make him better than Draco, and if famous Harry Potter insisted on making every wrong choice in his life - it was just as well.

When he came to school, all of one teacher was a decent wizard who knew what mattered in this world - Severus Snape. Draco’s father always said Snape was an asset, the most impressive half-blood he knew, and he was right - he wasn’t charmed with Potter like everybody else, and certainly not with his mudblood friend Granger.

In his first year, Harry Potter was made the youngest seeker in a century. In his second year, everybody thought he was Slytherin’s heir. In the third year, he somehow survived Sirius Black, and in his fourth year, he somehow became the Hogwarts champion. Honestly! Potter needed help from his insufferable know it all friend to pass every single class, and everyone and their mother thought he was so great.

If you asked Draco Malfoy, the Dark Lord’s resurrection at the end of his 4th year could not come soon enough. But he was back, and Draco knew the life he was promised at birth will soon begin.

Sure enough, in his fifth year, Draco was made prefect, Potter was universally acknowledged as a joke, and Dumbledore was sacked. His auntie Bellatrix was finally free, and he finally got to know her. But then, of all people, his own father failed. A simple mission at the Department of Mysteries exposed him to the world and cost him his freedom and his reputation.

His mother was devastated and heartbroken. His childhood friends’ families were ruined.

It was time to become a man - and the Dark Lord knew exactly how he felt.

“Of course I will let you join me, Draco. I would never judge your abilities based on your father’s failure. All I expect is that you be loyal to me.”

Draco looked at the great wizard with reverence. Voldemort literally came back from the dead. His name was so feared nobody dared to speak it. And he let him join his cause.

He swore to prove himself to Voldemort, by whatever means necessary.

“Under my training, you will learn to conquer every weakness. You will transcend and elevate your family name, Draco Malfoy. You will be known as the wizard who defeated the great Albus Dumbledore himself. Everyone will see the greatness that I see in you.”

The prospect made him dizzy with expectation. It was palpable - Hogwarts without the great muggle-loving fool, without the whispers and rumors and meaningless tests for Granger to beat him in and without Triwizard Tournaments for Potter to win somehow… and most important of all - no more failure to tear apart his family again.

He accepted the Dark Mark and he got to work immediately.


	19. The Long Summer

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I only have one more chapter written down, so after this one I might go on a brief hiatus again. I hope my readers enjoy, and I hope they find it insightful. All feedback and criticism are welcome! Thanks for reading! I really appreciate it!

Severus’s relief was short-lived.

That summer, bad news came to him like Weasley children - one after another, and each more awful that the last.

When he learned the underage Draco was recruited, he was dismayed. He suppressed it immediately. “Very well, my Lord. What do you intend to do with Draco?”

“I intend to dispose of him, eventually.” Voldemort said, making Severus’s blood curdle. He forced his features into a knowing smile, to express how much he appreciated being in Voldemort’s inner circle.

Voldemort continued to speak slowly, quietly, so that Severus had to listen very closely to follow. His great snake Nagini slithered around the room, as if more excited by the conversation than the Dark Lord himself. “When he fails to do what I assigned him to do, I wish for you to carry out the task. I don’t suppose I need to spell it out for you?”

“Not at all, my Lord.”

“I expect you to do better than you did when you attempted to procure the prophecy. I have forgiven you twice now.”

“I am grateful, my Lord.”

“Your continued service is not unnoticed. You will be rewarded above all others.”

As Snape left the room, he wondered - was this the line he used on Draco? Was this the sort of stuff that worked on Severus himself when he was 16? How could he have been so stupid?

He knew he was not long for this life. He felt death and its release coming closer, every day. To think that only a few short weeks before - or was it days? Everything was going so smoothly.

“He recruited another child.” He wrote to Arabella. “And that child, not unlike yours truly, considers it an honor. If the child somehow makes it out alive, I will be shocked.

I am not so sure that I will make it out, my friend. I do not mean to be dramatic, so let me just say this: If there is anything I can do to repay you your kindness throughout this year, say the word, and I will make sure you get it.”

She wrote him back:

“Just don’t die sooner than you have to. And do what you can for the child. He deserves better, just like you did.”

This made him feel better, but he was still in an impossible bind, that had him downing anti-nausea cures day and night.

He went over it, again, and again, and again.

Either Draco kills Dumbledore, leaving two out of three pawns on the Dark Lord’s great chess board intact, or he fails, in which case Voldemort will surely kill Draco and Severus himself, and then maybe Dumbledore as well. The third option was Severus will kill Dumbledore himself and then Draco will die, or be tortured in some grotesque and merciless manner Severus did not care to imagine.

Maybe Dumbledore could fake his death somehow? They still had the duplicate wand. Unfortunately, the killing curse emitted a green light, of which Voldemort was very much aware. Dumbledore will let no one do what Lily did and take the curse for him.

And so it went, ad infinitum, ad nauseum. 

What he wanted to do the most was to kill the Dark Lord himself - but he knew the Dark Lord will not stay dead.

Dumbledore might not have trusted him with his little Horcrux theory, but he was sufficiently learned in the Dark Arts, and he knew how Voldemort thinks - he figured it out on his own.

Then, in a terrible twist of fate, Dumbledore made the decision for all of them by almost beating all of them to it. It was so stupid, it was almost funny. He put on a cursed ring, and Severus found him just in time to stopper immediate death and give him one more year, maybe less, but definitely not  more, before the terrible magic that was now making its way through his veins hit a vital organ. Why did he put the thing on? The way it looked, the only thing that indicated that the ring had any value at all was that someone bothered to put such a powerful curse on it.

And how was Severus rewarded for saving Dumbledore’s life? Most fittingly, by being the one the intended victim himself appointed to end it.

As he left the Headmaster’s office, he wondered why everyone he tries to save always ends up dead.


	20. The Killing Curse

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Severus grapples with the task both of his masters gave him.

Snape was a faithful death eater for all of five years, in which he never killed anyone. Not in person.

For the first two years, he was still at Hogwarts, and for the other three, he was too inexperienced, and the Dark Lord left the murders to more accomplished wizards. But that did not mean Snape did not want to learn everything he could about the Killing Curse.

He longed to use it. He wanted to use it so much he knew exactly who he would use it on. On James Potter, on Sirius Black, and most of all, on his disgrace of a father - if he ever laid eyes on that miserable bastard again.

He dreamed about it. Having them cornered and helpless and pathetic, just as they had made him. Sometimes he toyed with the idea of sparing James. He reckoned it would be nice to let James Potter have a life debt to Severus Snape, and see how he likes that. Sometimes, he decided he will definitely kill him.

Under Lord Voldemort’s rule, everything was possible. His revenge was as good as guaranteed.

He was a very promising young man, and as such, he was tutored on the unforgivable curses by the Dark Lord himself.

“Now, Severus. You must mean them. You have to mean them, or they will not work.” The Dark Lord said, in one of their lessons. Back then, Lord Voldemort still wore his original human form, and he was tall, handsome, charismatic, and formidable. Everyone drank in the knowledge he imparted upon them.

“Even if you fully mean it, it takes powerful magic, to separate a soul from a body. In my view, the force that ties souls to bodies is the single most powerful force in the world, and breaking it takes substantial skill, focus, and strength. I have complete faith that you will soon possess this ability.”

As a young death eater, a compliment from Lord Voldemort meant the world to Snape. That was all the motivation he needed to apply himself to learning the Killing Curse and the dark arts in general, on top of the Hogwarts curriculum.

He wanted to learn everything he could learn from the man who, at 16, accomplished what Severus could not and killed his Muggle father. He knew he missed his chance to reproduce this display of skill and strength of character, but just because he was too soft the first time, didn’t mean he was going to miss the chance again, if the opportunity ever presented itself.

As the Dark Lord told him how he killed Tom Riddle, fantasies of doing away with his own father surfaced involuntarily into his mind, as did the memories of him leaving the Snape house forever with his body and soul very much intact. He was ashamed of his weakness, and determined to overcome it.

“When casting this spell, you must view your target as nothing more than animals, vile filth.” He inflected the word filth. “Nothing more than an object. After all, when you are done with your target, that is precisely what they will be.”

Severus committed the dark knowledge to his memory with greed, recited it, and fell asleep while picturing himself in a windowless room with his enemies, viewing them as the despicable, useless objects that they were.

“Should you fail,” Voldemort imparted, “you will have betrayed your intention to kill, and at the same time, your weakness - your inability to do so. This is why viewing your target as filth, at best, is crucial for the spell to work, Severus. Ideally, you will come to enjoy your kills and view them as proof of your inherent superiority over your targets. Do you understand?”

“I understand, my Lord.”

In the young Snape’s mind, the phrase "an animal, vile filth" described Tobias Snape very accurately. The school went ahead made James Potter Head Boy - but unmerited accolades notwithstanding, he believed the term applied to him and to his gang regardless.

He imagined having Potter and Black cornered, not surrounded by an adoring crowd, where a modicum of talent on the pitch, money, or good looks did not matter... realizing, to their horror, that he was indeed the more powerful wizard, apologizing fruitlessly for the years of torment that started as soon as they first saw each other and were in fact, still going on, the werewolf, the public humiliation... there was nothing they could offer him that he could reject in fulfillment of the Dark Lord's instructions, so he practiced emptying himself of any trace of love or respect for his father, or hope for a better relationship with him. His Master told him to imagine getting everything he ever wanted from the Muggle, and then murdering him anyway. So he did. He imagined Tobias Snape apologizing to him for everything he did to him and to his mother, confessing that he killed her, or telling him how she died, telling him he loved his son, telling him he was beautiful and perfect to him, just the way he was. And then he imagined pointing his wand straight at his father, to whom he bore such a disturbing resemblance, and rejecting his love and his attempt at reconciliation.

Severus Snape was a faithful death eater for all of five years, that ended with the Death of Lily Potter. He did not know how she died, at first. But he knew he was guilty. When he realized she had died by the Killing Curse, he knew: She was beautiful, whole, and perfect in every way, except that her perfect soul had left her perfect body for good. To his horror, he knew exactly what his Master thought of her as he took her from the world, and he knew James Potter, his bitter enemy, died to give her a chance to live, and he knew - every living cell in his body felt it - that the word "vile filth at best" applied very much to him.

Severus Snape was a faithful Death Eater for all of five years, and for a little over a year, he has been pretending to be a faithful Death Eater again. Now, he learned that he will finally get to use the Killing Curse. He would have to perform the mental gymnastic feat of denying a human’s humanity on none other than Albus Dumbledore, who gave him a second chance, who believed in his better nature when no one else would, who recognized his courage, who introduced him to Arabella Figg. He was certain he was going to fail.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I am particularly proud of this chapter, so I hope you enjoyed reading it! I loved exploring the way murderers think and the theme of fanatic devotion, and of course, of self loathing.  
> This is the last chapter I wrote, so - until the muse strikes again, please let me know what you think of my story!


	21. Wormtail

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> It appears that this story is not through with me yet - every time I think I'm done, turns out that I'm not. Hope it's to your liking!

Peter Pettigrew was sure he misheard his master’s words. _You will live with Severus Snape and you will assist him in everything he requires._ Severus Snape? Snivellus? Surely not. This was the height of humiliation. 12 years as the Weaseley’s pet rat could not prepare him for this blow.

As he stood before the door in Spinner’s End, he could not help but wonder where it all went wrong. He never cared about any of it - the Dark Arts, blood purity, who will rule the wizarding world… all he wanted was to belong, to be protected, to be respected. But all these things eluded him - and none of it was his fault!

He remembered, the night before he was to start at Hogwarts: A nervous boy, about to attend the fabled Hogwarts School of Witchcraft and Wizardry. He could not sleep, obviously, he was so nervous, and he heard his mother and his father talking: “No, not Slytherin. You know we’re no famous wizarding family, and Little Pete is nearly a Squib, they will eat him alive… and at Ravenclaw, too much pressure.” His father agreed - it’s not for him, he does not have the constitution for it. “Hufflepuff could be good,” his father went on, “but Gryffindor - that would be best. Dumbledore is Headmaster now, and the Headmistress is also a Gryffindor - he can’t go wrong in that house.”

He silently told the Sorting Hat: Either Hufflepuff or Gryffindor, please, please, please. “Gryffindor!” The hat cried, but he felt like it was not happy - it was not as clear as it was when it Sorted "Black, Sirius", or "Lupin, Remus", or "Evans, Lily". However the hat felt about it, Little Pete was pleased to walk down to the Gryffindor table, and sat beside the other first year boys. Almost immediately thereafter, “Potter, James” joined them. James and Sirius were jubilant. “We saw him on the Express, with that girl,” James whispered as “Snape, Severus” marched toward the Sorting Hat. “It’s him, isn’t it, Sirius?”  
“Yeah, that’s Snivellus,” Sirius snorted. “Nice one!” Peter said, and immediately, they were a team, and they had what every team needs - a common enemy.

Peter had made himself three friends, and he could not have been happier. Between James and Sirius’s popularity and Remus’s academic skills, he was covered on every front. Hogwarts was theirs for the taking. They were hopeful, not a care in the world, and they were in the best house. They had it all, and nothing could change that, especially not the slimy Slytherin they despised. Whenever something threatened to come between them, there was Snivellus, to keep them united and their spirits up. He was the butt of every joke, the preferred target, a complete and total fool, and whenever Peter felt like he was not as good as the other three, that they did not view him as an equal, exactly, he could always tell himself: _At least I am not_ him.

In their first year, their group caught Snivellus in the restricted section, sitting cross-legged on the floor, with an enormous book about curses open on his knees. He was reading with great focus. You could not even see his knees under that book, it must have weighed more than him. “Trying to learn the Dark Arts, are we now, Snivelly?” James said aloud, and Snivellus was so startled he jumped up and the book snapped shut, nearly closing on Snivellus's nose. “It’s not for me!” He said in a high voice, “I don’t care about that, it’s for my mu-” he tried to say, pleadingly, but the group circled him - it was so funny, Snivellus looked like he was about to wet himself. “Don’t let us catch you studying the Dark Arts again,” James said menacingly, looking formidable and impressive. “I wasn’t -” Snivellus protested, and James stepped forward. “I said, don’t let us catch you studying the Dark Arts again! Repeat after me.” Snivellus’s eyes were large, he looked like he was about to scream or cry.

“I’m not -”  
“Say it!”   
“I won’t study the Dark Arts again,” he stammered. “Very good, Snivellus,” James decided, and they all left.

Life was good. Remus appeared to be sick half the time, but he did alright in class anyway. In their second year, they made James the Gryffindor Seeker, and Sirius did the commentary, and now they owned Quidditch as well. Once, Peter tried the leg-locker curse on Snivellus when he was starting to go down the stairs, and to the delight of all his friends and everyone else who was there, Snivellus fell down and all his books went flying. He got up as if being thrown down stairs was a normal thing for him, and picked up his books, and he was angry, but there was nothing he could do about it. Gryffindors were popular, and although things in the grown up world were looking grim, at Hogwarts they were safe and free, and Dumbledore and the staff loved them. “It’s very kind of you to be so accepting of Mr. Lupin,” Pomfrey let slip once, in their third year, as Peter went to get Remus from the hospital wing. He did not think twice about that non-sequitur, and it did not occur to him to wonder how they were being that exceptionally kind. All they did was what any friend would do - walk him to and from the hospital wing. If the question started to nag, Peter did not let it rise to the surface of his mind.

That this was the right course of action was proven soon enough, through the slimy Slytherin, the best educational aid anyone could have asked for if one wanted to learn what not to do, what not to be. They were 13, and Remus was in the hospital wing again. James just lost his first match, and he was not happy. “Don’t worry about it, mate,” Sirius tried to cheer him. “We’re still in the lead for the cup.” James was not used to losing and he was incredibly moody, but then he became furious - he spotted Snivellus and Lily. “Hey Evans, did you see me make that dive?” He asked her, ignoring Snivelly. “No,” she said, her voice distant - “we don’t care about Quidditch.” She didn’t even look up at them. “We?” James asked, angrier by the second. “Who’s ‘we?’” Lily stood up, and Snivellus shrank. “Don’t, Lil,” the scared chicken stammered under his breath. She did not listen. “Sev and I, that’s who! We don’t care about that stupid game, and we don’t care about your Nimbus 1000 either!”

Peter was excited to see what will happen next. “Of course _he_ says he doesn’t,” James mocked him. “Your little Slytherin friend can’t even mount a broomstick, can he? You spend too much time with him. You should hang around people in your own house.”

“I’ll hang around whoever I like and I’ll thank you to stop bothering us!” Lily said, steel in her voice.

“You better stay in your own house, then,” James turned to Snivellus, addressing him for the first time. “They all love the Dark Arts, just like you, don’t they?”

“It’s not my fault you lost, Potter!” Snivellus said, trying to sound brave, and James took his wand out, and so did Sirius. Peter stepped back, instinctively assuming his natural role as lookout. “Three against two now, is it? That’s new… where’s your friend, the one that’s always ill? What’s wrong with him, is he allergic to arrogant pillocks?” Snivellus had the nerve to mock them! James got mad, madder than Peter had ever seen him, but Lily jumped in front of her greasy mate and James ended up hexing her - “Ouch!” She shouted, as ugly welts formed on her skin. “You bullying bast-” she cried, but before she could finish, Snivellus hexed James back, and that’s when Peter shouted - “a prefect is coming!”

The prefect found a Slytherin in perfect health and two Gryffindors with angry welts - of course Snivellus lost his house 10 points that day. Lily tried to protest, but Black warned her not to say anything to lose their house any more points. “Like you care! You lose us points every day!” She accused Sirius. “I don’t hang around snakes though….” Sirius retorted, baring his teeth.

“Let’s go, Sirius, Pete,” James decided suddenly. They followed, and Peter wondered - where _does_ Lupin go every month? His mind went quiet as they returned to their dorm and enjoyed a game of exploding snap and the full moon shone through the window.

“Asking where Remus is, can’t find friends in his own house, can’t be bothered to watch a game of Quidditch with everyone, stupid Slytherin git…” James muttered to himself all of a sudden. “We’ve got to get him alone.” It was not the same night, or even the same week, but they were finally able to corner him alone, trap him in a deserted classroom, and a well-placed leg locker later (they knew he was susceptible to that one, didn’t they?), they kicked his ribs, pulled his hair, spit on him, wiped his spit on his face when he paid them in kind, punched him when he tried to bite their hand, did everything they could think of really - but he did not cry. “This is a warning, keep your big nose out of our business, Snivellus,” James ordered him, “and stop bothering Evans.” They left him there, and the fact that he did not cry was the only thing that got in the way of their sense of accomplishment. “If he doesn’t leave us alone now, he must want to die,” Sirius chuckled.

Professor Slughorn was obviously displeased at having to drag his student to the Great Hall for breakfast the next day. Peter thought he heard him tell Snivellus: “Learn to say out of trouble, won’t you,” and Sirius could not help but observe that even his own head of house hates him. “How could anyone not?” James asked with bitter sincerity, as Lily shot a look of dismayed concern toward the Slytherin table, and the git mouthed “it’s nothing”.

Soon enough, it became clear _why_ James was so upset with Snivellus asking too many questions: He knew what Remus was. Remus told him first. “I’ve been sharing a dorm with a werewolf?!” Peter asked, shocked. “Oh, come off it, Pete - you’re fine, aren’t you? He’s completely safe, completely normal, a better wizard than you are, even - he’s just sick.” Even after everything that happened, as an adult, Peter remembered Remus’s grateful expression, and he was still touched by the memory of that moment. Now, their group had more than a common enemy - they had a common secret, and they were closer than ever. Maybe that’s what made James finally admit it - he thought Evans was the prettiest girl in the world since he first saw her. “What does she see in that greasy git?” He wondered often, loudly, and the only thing that cheered him up was when the other three chimed in with insults. James took his frustration out on his everyone, especially Snivellus, but never on his friends, and Peter was again glad of his choice to be a Gryffindor.

They became animagi. They created their map. They had great adventures on full moon nights. Being a Gryffindor was the best thing that could have happened to Little Pete. They became Prongs, Padfoot, Moony, and Wormtail.

Then Padfoot had to go ahead and ruin everything - he had to tell Snivellus how to get past the willow and enter the Shack. Peter would never forgot how, on one full moon night, Sirius sauntered into their dorm room, deliberately slowly, and faux-casually took out the map. He could barely get through the phrase “I solemnly swear that I am up to no good”, he could not stop laughing. As soon as he found was what he was apparently looking for he gloated about a particularly greasy dot that was about to disappear off the map forever… Prongs nearly ripped the map from his hand. “You did WHAT?!” He shouted at Padfoot, grabbed the cloak and his wand, and disappeared.

Peter and Sirius crouched over the map for 90 minutes, and waited for something to happen, and finally, Snivelly’s dot ran toward the Slytherin dorms and Prongs’s dot moved toward their room. “You’re lucky,” James spit at Sirius. “I got in there just before Moony could pounce him. I got Dumbledore to wait until tomorrow to decide what to do, so you better be on your best behavior tomorrow when Minnie asks how he knew how to enter the Shack. What the hell were you thinking?!”

Sirius was outraged: “ME?! What were you thinking, saving him? Are you mad?!”

Prongs shouted back: “Padfoot, Moody’d have been executed, do you get that? And you would have been expelled. I want him gone as much as you do, but you better act ashamed of yourself tomorrow.” All Sirius had to say in response to James’s lecture was: “Fine.”

It must have been the lonegst night of Pete's life. He could not believe they were fighting over this. None of the three slept a wink that night, and none said another word. In the Shrieking Shack, Moony must have been waiting, wondering where his animal friends were, and Peter felt for him.

The next morning, They returned from their appointment with Dumbledore, Minnie and Slughorn, elated. “We just got detention, and if I schedule enough Quidditch practices, we probably won’t have to do those either. And that filthy tattle tale can’t talk. Dumbledore prohibited him to - can’t expose Moony.” Everything seemed like it might go back to normal.  
Except Prongs had to tell Moony - “Snivellus knowns,” he said darkly. “He saw you. Padfoot told him how to get in.” Now, poor Peter did not know what to do. James tried to be neutral, but Moony refused to listen to reason, and for a month, their dorm was a battlefield. _If I side with Moony, the others won’t talk to me anymore… and if I side with Padfoot I’ll always be left out…_ Peter thought, incessantly. It was excruciating to him - all he wanted was to belong. He could not believe it when the full moon came again - they have been fighting a whole entire month! Moony left the dorm, and as he did, he said: “Don’t bother coming. And don’t send anybody else down there for me to do your dirty work, if you can help it.” Padfoot was almost in tears.

The air was thick with sadness, and they were all quiet. _How, and_ why _had Snivellus come between them, of all people?_ Peter wondered. “I wish he didn’t exist at all,” he said ruefully, breaking the silence. “Oh, be quiet. Moony will come around,” James said. “Not Moony!” Peter objected, then his voice dropped an octave - “Snape.” Nobody spoke. “Sirius would not have had to do that if he’d let us be.”

“Yeah!” Sirius said, invigorated. “That’s right! Thanks, Wormy!”  
Peter suggested: “Let’s go to the shack anyway. Poor Moony must be biting himself down to the bone without us.” They went, and the wolf and the great black dog fought, and when they transformed back into their human forms, they were friends again. At least, they were not fighting anymore. At least, Peter no longer had to choose.

Prongs and Padfoot never involved Moony in their tricks on Snivellus again, though - they’d go out, alone, and come back with a mischievous smile. “Bastard got us this time,” they’d say, and reveal traces of a hex - but they always laughed it off. “Wonder how he got our tongue to stick to the roof of our mouths like that, though…” One of them would say. “Probably Dark magic,” the other would answer.

That spring, Peter’s stress was running high - it was their O.W.L. year, and he was never as clever as the others. But he was not the only one who had to let off some steam. It was a glorious spring day, the weather was perfect, and they’d just sat their Defense exam. Watching his two best friends give Snivellus what he deserved was the best way to relax after this excruciating exam - it certainly beat the alternative - having them take the piss out of _Peter_ , as if it was his fault he did not just get an O, or fighting about Moony’s stupid secret again. 

If Snivellus was the most unpopular boy in their year before that day, now he had to be the most hated boy in Hogwarts history. Even his only friend called him Snivellus - oh, he had it coming, after what he called her! - and next he was suspended upside down and James took off his pants in front of a cheering crowd, and the only person who could stop them was Moony, and what was he going to do? Was there anyone worse, filthier, more disgusting than Snivellus? That he showed his face anywhere near the Gryffindor Tower to try and talk to Evans was proof, as far as Peter was concerned, that this was the most pathetic, most desperate person alive, and probably the stupidest too.

It only dawned on Peter why James appeared to relax a little after Lily stopped talking to her Slytherin friend - said she only tolerated him because she knew him from before school, actually - said she never wants anything to do with any Slytherin again, said they were never even that close - of course! James fancied her, that’s why Snivellus bothered him so much! She started hanging around Moony first, and he explained to her: “Prongs is not that bad, he’ll do anything for his friends.” She finally agreed to go out with Prongs in their 7th year. Sirius was snogging a different girl every week. Life was perfect again, but the world outside the castle loomed large. No matter how much Peter hated the thought of it all ending, it was, and time was moving fast. Dumbledore already talked to them about joining the Order when they graduate - well, mostly Prongs and Padfoot, but the Marauders were a package deal.

They graduated, and they joined, and _that_ was the wrong choice. It was not Peter’s fault! Nobody told him, how was he supposed to know, how could he have guessed that outside Hogwarts, Dumbledore was not viewed nearly as favorably? What was he thinking, sending wizards who were barely of age, to fight? The owls carrying their N.E.W.T. results barely had time to rest and already they were fighting! Fighting was too generous a term, to be honest. They were losing - it was hopeless, and the others simply did not see. You could not breathe a word against Dumbledore to them. Peter felt alone. He was used to believing in his friends, trusting their judgment, agreeing with what they thought was right.

St. Mungo’s was neutral territory, and Peter found himself there after a vicious battle he was ill-equipped to fight. He was never a powerful wizard, why was he there at all?! Pain, helplessness, and loneliness washed over him in his hospital bed with the weight of a thousand blankets. None of his great friends came to visit. Moony was important enough that they all became animagi for him, but Wormy - heaven forbid the precious Order should wait! He absent-mindedly ate half a box of chocolate Lily sent him and half-heartedly answered his roommate’s questions about Dumbledore. “What, is he runnin’ out of more experienced wizards to die for him?” His neighbor asked. _Exactly! What business of mine is this war? I have nothing against the Muggles, but it’s not like they’re running around protecting me!_

Peter decided to see what the other side had to say, and the Death Eaters, far from being the lunatics he always believed them to be… made good points. They were united. They were winning - and they needed him. Peter’s choice to be a Gryffindor, so long ago, made him infinitely useful to them. He was not longer the hanger-on or the peacemaker. They did not mock him. He-Who-Must-Not-Be-Named himself told him he had great power, that his “friends” were holding him back. He taught him incredible spells. Peter became a spy - years as a marauder taught him how to lie. In the meanwhile, Sirius and Remus would not stop badmouthing one another. “He’s a Black!” Remus whined, “He’s a werewolf!” Sirius reminded them. It was convenient, but it was almost insulting! None of them could fathom that maybe little Wormy had a life outside their group. Sirius suggested to make Peter secret keeper, and Peter knew he was being offered a choice. It was not easy - he loved James, Lily was wonderful, and their baby was innocent… but then, what was Peter? Did he ask for any of this, did he deserve to die at 21, with so much left to see, to experience? With so much time? _It’s either me or them._ He gave the Potters up.

His reward? To fake his death and live as a rat. This was too shameful to think about, but it was better than death or Azkaban, at least until that vile cat started hunting him down. Sirius had escaped - _how?_ \- and it was time for the rat to jump ship. He sought out the Dark Lord, and he found him, and tended to him, waited on him hand and foot… well, not hand and foot exactly, for he had neither, but nevertheless… and he waited, expected, longed for his true reward, for his true life to begin.

It never came. He found himself knocking on the door of the shabbiest house in the shabbiest town in England - _here? Snivellus lives here?!_ \- to start his next assignment as an “assistant” to none other than the slimy Slytherin he and his friends used to scare and taunt and punch and kick and hex and mock and curse and jinx and spit on, and push down the stairs and watch, watch as all of that happened… Peter did not look forward to this - he felt he was being punished for his loyalty - but he had absolutely no other choice, no other place to go. A bitter realization dawned on him: His choice-making days were over before they began.

“Ah, Wormtail,” Severus said, savoring the shift in power, a hateful glint in his eyes. “Let us make one thing clear. The Dark Lord is testing both of us. He knows we loathe each other. He saw all the amusing tricks you played on me… you and your friends. Remember your friends? So. They were not so funny if you ask me, and I freely admit I would rather you stayed away from me. We must, however, prove that we are both faithful to the Dark Lord.” Snivellus paused. “We are not both faithful. You, you are faithful only to yourself. My loyalty never wavered, Wormtail. But if you do as I say and keep your nose out of my business, I will not treat you like you surely would have treated me if our roles were reversed. It should be easy for you” - he paused again - “to stay away, without your very special map you used to surveil everybody with.”

Peter swallowed and answered: “If it pleases the Dark Lord.” He entered his new dwelling place - so dilapidated, miserable, and rickety, it made the Burrow look like the Potters' house. _Snivellus’s servant. Here._ The humiliation and the irony of it were unbearable.


	22. The Other Bella's Interrogation

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> This chapter corresponds with the Chapter "Spinner's End" in Half-Blood Prince, in which Bellatrix attempts to interrogate our hero and Narcissa asks him to help and protect her son, culminating in the Unbreakable Vow.

As if Severus did not have enough to be getting on with, Voldemort gave him a roommate. Severus let him in with undisguised disgust, and as he pulled his mind away from the rat’s, assured that the rat was just as unhappy about this arrangement as he was, he bitterly congratulated himself on being a kinder, worthier man that Wormtail, fully recognizing that this was not saying much at all, and he did not wonder what he did to deserve having the man who watched with sycophantic delight as Severus was being tortured relentlessly, who knowingly sacrificed Lily, thus undoing everything Severus did to try to save her, stationed at his home. What he deserved or what he felt about it did not matter. It never has.

He was not sure if his master had stationed the rat at his home at Spinner’s End to babysit his spy or vice versa, but he did not wish to be anywhere near Peter Pettigrew in either capacity. Consequently, he was a very poor host to the parasite, and he often contemplated practicing the killing curse on him.

Severus Snape liked the dark. The tendency grew stronger in him over the years, but he liked the nighttime since he was a child. Now, as a man whose life depended on remaining hidden, he felt that life behind the curtain indeed suited him best. The few moments when he allowed himself to be seen took place in the nighttime. He felt his happy childhood memories were like the film in Muggle cameras - direct light would destroy them. He was a nocturnal creature and he liked solitude.

In addition to his many other faults, Pettigrew infringed on his solitude, and dared to protest when Severus punished him with household  chores.

This was a long summer, and it was not over yet.

He finally got his “death wish”, as he was named  defense against the dark arts teacher; Dumbledore, knowing his days were numbered, knew he could not risk another incompetent monster teaching the kids what they needed to know, now, more than ever.

He longed for solitude, he yearned for peace and quiet, but he was denied that simple pleasure for yet another night by a visit from the Black sisters. _As if there is any solitude, peace, or quiet to be had with the rat  with the silver paw around anyway_ _,_ he told himself as he opened the door and welcomed Narcissa and Bellatrix into the most beaten-down abode either one of them must have set foot in.

The visit had made one thing clear to him, however: As long and painful has his summer had been, it was nothing compared to the summer his friends and benefactors the Malfoys were going through.

Bellatrix, poor, misguided, Bellatrix, was innocent in her own way. She was a true believer, just like he was, and she was ruled by love, just like he was. The object of her love, though living, was as far from her as Lily was from him. The poor soul was strung along by a man less capable of love than his squib friend was capable of magic. Finally, he saw what Dumbledore meant when he called her a victim. Her pathetic little interrogation told Severus more about Bellatrix than it could ever tell Bellatrix about Severus. He rehearsed the answers to her tired questions a thousand times, they slid off his tongue so easily, they hardly felt like lies.  When he blasted the rat away from the door, he did it not to protect himself, but to protect Narcissa, who seemed to be on the brink of collapse.

Poor, misguided Bella had none of the insight and none of the near magical empathy he had come to love in his other Bella.  She asked all the wrong questions, and she was satisfied, shocked, even, by the very slim proof he offered. His admonition of Cissy’s willingness to speak of the Dark Lord’s unholy plan,  his acceptance of a task he had already committed to, though he still didn’t know how he would perform, left her speechless.

Narrow-minded Bellatrix assumed he was like her, that he was motivated by admiration for a great wizard (though she assumed it was Dumbledore, of course, that he admired), that he could never be devoted to someone who was weak enough to die. She was wrong on all counts. She saw him begging the Dark Lord to spare Lily Potter all these years ago and she hadn’t asked about her once. She forgot. Dead mudbloods were simply of no concern to her.

Her line of questioning showed him only that she was desperate – she was losing favor, she was shocked that the love of her life confided in another about his plans. She might as well have said it outright: I am losing him, I wish I could give him a son. But he had no sympathy to spare for Bellatrix, as Narcissa was literally begging him to help her. When he told her that the Dark Lord was angry, that there was no chance at all to make him spare an innocent life, just because  they were loved – he was speaking absolute truth, and his tone was flat and emotionless. He was looking out the window as he said it. Good liars lie like they are telling the truth. Great liars, he had learned, tell the truth like they are lying, and he was nothing if not a great liar.

Narcissa Malfoy of the House of Black was kneeling on the floor of the half blood’s house in the Muggle dung hill, and her mind was wide open to him. He learned that except for Draco, the Malfoy family  had all but defected from the cause and were interested only in making it out in one piece. He learned that Draco was loved, loved enough that he could truly be saved, and as he glanced at the soul of a mother who was willing to do anything for her son, he thought for a moment he saw a glimmer of green in her blue eyes.

He knew he could not refuse, and if it shut Bellatrix up, all the better.

In the back of his mind, the wheels started spinning. He will be teaching defense against the dark arts, just as he was about to perform the darkest spell of all.

“My dear Bella, have you given any thought to my offer? There will come a time, soon, when things will be very different. I cannot tell you more. I must ask how you became so observant; I have been interrogated by a great witch today, and I fooled her with ease. I am sure, had she learned a trick or two from you, I would’ve failed miserably, but fortunately for us she despises Muggle-borns, and does not even take notice of Wizard-borns enough to despite them.”

Her reply said: “I still wish only for you to stick around for as long as you can. Do you think it is possible  to grow up powerless among wizards without developing the ability to anticipate and manipulate people, Severus? I do not much like doing these things, but we all do what we must to survive. I was also able to fool the paranoid Dursleys, remember? That is why I prefer the company of cats to that of most people – they are not fooled so easily. Take care, my dear.”

As he was reading her letter, he heard the rat scurrying about. _I could use a cat here,_ he told himself _._ He felt his presence behind the door, and he blasted him casually.


	23. The Cursed Necklace

The school year started, and Severus found that the elements of time itself had conspired to mock him. While every day was getting him closer to that performance of a lifetime - the Assasination of Albus Dumbledore - in every other sense it was as if a play entitled “the Half-Blood Prince’s Miserable and Perfectly Regrettable Sixth Year” had been partially recast and completely bastardized as a butchered performance was unfolding before him.

The role of a young, fanatical, but still salvageable death eater was played by Draco Malfoy, who was eager to move the plot (against himself) along with all his inexperienced might.

Horace Slughorg was reprising his role as Potions Master and collector of well-connected or impressive students. The idiot still made a point of boasting that he has never been wrong about a student yet, apparently forgetting the slight blemish on an otherwise still not impeccable record known as Tom Marvolo Riddle.

The useless, doomed Defense Against the Dark Arts teacher was played, of course, by Severus himself, who was determined not to perform like his own forgotten teacher who was purporting to teach his class defense while not noticing a budding Dark Artist was sitting in front of him. It was a bold casting choice, but the next one was very obvious: the Gryffindor Quidditch Captain, favored by all despite his astounding mediocrity, was portrayed to perfection by Harry Potter, son and spitting image of his predecessor in life and in the role. Also reprising its role was the gaping void left by Lily Evans.

Unbeknownst to Severus, his mother’s hand-me-down copy of Advanced Potions Making (which had by then elevated in status from a hand-me-down to an inheritance, of course), which recorded his transformation into a paranoid, hateful man who loved and trusted nobody, except for Lord Voldemort, had resurfaced to play itself.

Severus Snape did not know this, but he was teaching Harry Potter not only Defense Against the Dark Arts, but also the Dark Arts themselves, and finally,  _ finally _ , Potions.

The two boys Severus swore to protect were enemies, and they were at each other’s throats before the year even started. But while Harry had the entire Order looking out for him and openly covering for his vast foolishness, Draco - who was used to being protected by his family name and fortune - now had only Severus.

Unfortunately, Draco completely rejected any attempt at protecting him. Snape recognized that combination of complete faith and complete paranoia, of course. They were both completely misplaced: Just like Draco, Snape trusted the Dark Lord and deeply mistrusted everyone else. As he saw Draco going down the same path, he missed the simplicity of his death eater days less and less. The insolent child’s naivete infuriated and frustrated him beyond belief.

He actually tried to eliminate Dumbledore with a cursed necklace, that wound up nearly eliminating nothing but an inessential member of the Gryffindor quidditch team, who was certainly not worth tearing your soul apart over. That so-called plan, which was excellent if your goal was to draw a lot of attention to the fact that a very stupid murderer is roaming about the school but awful if your goal was to kill a very specific target, showed that for all of Draco’s apparent confidence, he was already desperate, and all the more dangerous for it - yet he was still refusing to accept help. 

Severus did everything he could, throwing detentions liberally at Draco’s lookouts, attempting to detain Draco himself, but nothing got to him, absolutely nothing.

Severus’s room at Hogwarts was not large. He was comfortable in it - he could easily shrink the material objects he needed so that they fit there comfortably, and the uninviting room gave no one the illusion that they were welcome to come in. It was starting to feel crowded, however, as he closed the door behind him every evening and stared at the opposite wall for a minute or two, in complete awe at the enormity of the task that lay before him, and in complete disbelief that every fresh morning became a stale night and still, no catastrophe took place - only near-catastrophes, like Ms. Katie Bell’s encounter with the cursed necklace.

As the walls continued to feel closer together every night, as if they were eager to crush Severus between them, he took to sitting on his bed and looking at his hands. He looked at the Dark Mark, the detestable, indelible, shameful mark that denied him the pleasure of short sleeves previously denied by his dear father, that now embellished Draco’s arm, and he looked at his pale skin where the tongues of fire bonded him to Narcissa. Only after that little ritual could he fall asleep, somehow.


	24. Always

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> So it is pretty clear what point in the canonical plot this corresponds to - Severus finds out Harry will have to die. JK Rowling herself wrote the impeccable dialogue, obviously, and I did not touch it to keep this true to canon - but I added my own plot points and of course, from Severus's perspective, it all has to look a little different. Enjoy.

It was March. Since Katie Bell’s near-fatal brush with the necklace before Christmas, the rate at which disasters struck seemed to slow down considerably. Even so, it was coming, in Dumbledore’s pithy words, “as surely as the Chudley Cannons will finish bottom of this year’s league”.

If only Draco knew that it was coming, perhaps he would not have stooped to such increasingly desperate measures as giving Professor Slughorn a bottle of poisoned mead in the faint hope that he will share it with the Headmaster. But Draco did not know, and he did exactly that (who has been giving him ideas? Goyle?), and ended up nearly ending Ron Weasley. Inexplicably, Potter finally got it through his thick skull that a bezoar will cure most poisons, and Draco got to live another day without blood on his hands.

Severus and Dumbledore were in the Dark Forest. Dumbledore callously reminded him of the task he gave him - as if he needed reminding. Severus was certainly more upset about the coming death than the dying man himself. It would have been admirable, if Dumbledore had not also been a fool.

“What are you doing with Potter, all these evenings you are closeted together?” Severus asked abruptly.

Dumbledore looked weary.

“Why? You aren’t trying to give him more detentions, Severus? The boy will soon have spent more time in detention than out.”

“He is his father over again—”

“In looks, perhaps, but his deepest nature is much more like his mother’s. I spend time with Harry because I have things to discuss with him, information I must give him before it is too late.”

“Information,” repeated Severus. “You trust him. . . you do not trust me.” 

“It is not a question of trust. I have, as we both know, limited time. It is essential that I give the boy enough information for him to do what he needs to do.”

“And why may I not have the same information?”

“I prefer not to put all of my secrets in one basket, particularly not a basket that spends so much time dangling on the arm of Lord Voldemort.” Dumbledore’s nerve was a marvel.

“Which I do on your orders!”

“And you do it extremely well. Do not think that I underestimate the constant danger in which you place yourself, Severus. To give Voldemort what appears to be valuable information while withholding the essentials is a job I would entrust to nobody but you.”

“Yet you confide much more in a boy who is incapable of Occlumency, whose magic is mediocre, and who has a direct connection into the Dark Lord’s mind!”

“Voldemort fears that connection,” said Dumbledore. “Not so long ago he had one small taste of what truly sharing Harry’s mind means to him. It was pain such as he has never experienced. He will not try to possess Harry again,

I am sure of it. Not in that way.”

“I don’t understand.”

“Lord Voldemort’s soul, maimed as it is, cannot bear close contact with a soul like Harry’s. Like a tongue on frozen steel, like flesh in flame—”. Dumbledore might have been a great Wizard, but he was a substandard poet. They did not have time for his metaphors.

“Souls? We were talking of minds!”

“In the case of Harry and Lord Voldemort, to speak of one is to speak of the other.”

Dumbledore glanced around to make sure that they were alone. They were close by the Forbidden Forest now, but there was no sign of anyone near them.

“After you have killed me, Severus—”

“You refuse to tell me everything, yet you expect that small service of me!” snarled Severus, and anger rose in him as if some particularly stupid first year added acid to an alkaline potion. “You take a great deal for granted, Dumbledore! Perhaps I have changed my mind!”

“You gave me your word, Severus. And while we are talking about services you owe me, I thought you agreed to keep a close eye on our young Slytherin friend?”

He was angry, mutinous.  _ Why don’t you try holding back a 16 year old death eater  with nothing to lose,  _ he thought, not caring if Dumbledore was reading his mind or not. Dumbledore sighed.

“Come to my office tonight, Severus, at eleven, and you shall not complain that I have no confidence in you. . . ”

He came to the office, feeling extremely foolish. Was Albus toying with him? They could discuss the plan to kill him in the forest freely, yet he had to drag him to his office in the middle of the night? Intensifying the drama with unnecessary delays seemed utterly redundant. Nevertheless, he came.

Soon enough he wished he hadn’t.

Dumbledore talked cryptically of some task or other Potter had to do. Did he truly drag Severus in just to tease him with clues?

And then he said the words that punched the air out of his lungs, put a fist in his throat, that nearly blinded him with shock.

“Tell him that on the night Lord Voldemort tried to kill him, when Lily cast her own life between them as a shield, the Killing Curse rebounded upon Lord Voldemort, and a fragment of Voldemort’s soul was blasted apart from the whole, and latched itself onto the only living soul left in that collapsed building. Part of Lord Voldemort lives inside Harry, and it is that which gives him the power of speech with snakes, and a connection with Lord Voldemort’s mind that he has never understood. And while that fragment of soul, unmissed by Voldemort, remains attached to and protected by Harry, Lord Voldemort cannot die.”

_ Occlude. Occlude right now. Severus, stop it. Stop it, you imbecile. You are pretending. You do not care.  This is not real. He cannot mean it. Control yourself, Severus! _

“So the boy. . . the boy must die?” asked Severus quite calmly. He was indeed a superb Occlumens.  


“And Voldemort himself must do it, Severus. That is essential.” Essential! What on earth could be essential if Lily’s son had to die? Nothing. Nothing was. In two sentences, Dumbledore turned Severus Snape’s life into a joke. This surely could not be.

“I thought. . . all those years. . . that we were protecting him for her. For Lily.”

“We have protected him because it has been essential to teach him, to raise him, to let him try his strength,” said Dumbledore, his eyes still tight shut.

“Meanwhile, the connection between them grows ever stronger, a parasitic growth. Sometimes I have thought he suspects it himself. If I know him, he will have arranged matters so that when he does set out to meet his death, it will truly mean the end of Voldemort.”

Dumbledore opened his eyes. Severus was horrified. Dismayed. Was Dumbledore imperiused? Did the curse somehow reach his brain?

“You have kept him alive so that he can die at the right moment?”

“Don’t be shocked, Severus. How many men and women have you watched die?”

“Lately, only those whom I could not save,” said Severus , forsaking all caution. He stood up. “You have used me.”

“Meaning?”

“I have spied for you and lied for you, put myself in mortal danger for you. Everything was supposed to be to keep Lily Potter’s son safe. Now you tell me you have been raising him like a pig for slaughter—”

“But this is touching, Severus,” said Dumbledore seriously. “Have you grown to care for the boy, after all?”

“For him?” Severus shouted. He had very few memories that could override the confusion and terror he was experiencing at that moment. He quickly settled on the memory of a moment that happened when Lily and he were 12 years old -  _ I am waking up and she is so close to me, her face over my face, and all I can see are her smiling eyes. _ “Expecto Patronum!”

From the tip of his wand burst the silver doe. She landed on the office floor, bounded once across the office, and soared out of the window, as graceful, elegant and  _ magical  _ as Lily herself was. Dumbledore watched her fly away, and as her silvery glow faded he turned back to Severus, and his eyes were full of tears.

“After all this time?”

“Always.”

Dumbledore’s response proved it - he was not under the Imperius curse. Harry had to die. The silver doe was gone, gone as Lily was, gone as her son was to be, and with it, the happiness and love that inspired her.

He did not have the strength Occlude anymore. Both men’s eyes were glistening.

The moment that just passed was sweet, sickeningly sentimental, but nothing was resolved.

“Listen to me, Severus. He might not have to stay dead.” Dumbledore was solemn, but there was an undertone of urgency, of very faint hope.

“I cannot guarantee it,” he continued. “We are in uncharted magical territory, but I suspect that if Voldemort - only Voldemort, mind you - attempts the killing curse on him again, he will only have killed the residue of himself in Harry. Harry will have a choice to return. You see, he used Harry’s blood to resurrect himself. With only one killing curse aimed at two souls, I believe Harry has a good chance of coming back. It will depend on his strength of character and on a great deal of luck, but he has demonstrated both qualities in spades.”

Severus sniffed. He did not like to rely on luck for obvious reasons, and he believed calling the boy who, well into his sixth year, still could not perform a non-verbal spell “strong” was as sensible as, well, putting on a ring that was obviously cursed.

“In any event, it’s a moot point,” Dumbledore said. Suddenly, Severus remembered that first meeting on the hill, when he was so unprepared to meet Dumbledore’s cold, calculating, mercilessly practical and manipulative side.

“You know,” Severus found himself saying, the words struggling to come out of his shocked mouth. “I sometimes think that we  _ do  _ Sort too soon…”

If he was ever going to kill Dumbledore, now seemed like just the moment.

“It is a moot point because they will face one another in the end, and Voldemort is sure to try to kill him again. Harry’s chances are better if he walks toward mortal danger knowing what is to come. Just like you have been doing.”

Of course, Dumbledore was right. Again.

Severus always believed one day he will have to do what Lily did and jump in front of Harry to die in his stead, but if that meant the fragment of soul inside Harry will survive as well, it was sure to grow stronger, ultimately destroying him. Lily’s son could not be used as a vessel and then discarded like Quirrel. 

If the boy had any chance, any chance at all, he would have to do what Lily did himself.

He was grateful that the Dark Lord’s pride guaranteed that none other than the Dark Lord will try to kill him.

He would have to play his part in reinforcing the idiotic notion that only Voldemort had the power to kill Harry, that this was the only way to be rid of him, even though it was precisely the other way around, for only the boy keeping part of Voldemort alive had the power to kill him, but as a death eater, Severus was used to uttering lies, regardless of his level of faith in them.


	25. For Enemies

The weather was getting nicer. The world was warmer, sunnier, altogether happier. So of course, Severus's insides were growing colder, his thoughts darker, and his mood meaner. Dumbledore had months, at most, and notwithstanding the rapidly decaying Headmaster’s opinion of the famous Harry Potter, he still saw a mediocre wizard who managed to get himself almost killed at every turn even with Dumbledore’s protection. 

Severus’s secrets were compounding. It was one thing to pour his heart out to Arabella about the past - she now knew everything, except for the events of the night that led him to reach out to her, events he shuddered to think of. But the future - the future by definition hasn’t happened yet, so why confess to her about his future crimes? Her love meant too much to him, and he knew it will soon run out, inevitably, and very deservedly.

Draco, who has always been a fine student, became a very frustrating person to try to teach anything to now that he refused to believe that they were actually on the same side. “You are probably going to say it is because I am on his side, the side of the child who needs protection, and he is no longer on his own side, because he wants to prove that he is a man”, he would have written to Arabella. But he did not - for he knew her razor sharp mind will realize that he needs protection from something, and he could not tell her what from, nor how he was going to provide that protection. The unwritten letter would have gone on to say: “I still call it plain stupidity.” Draco insisted on directing all of his natural Slytherin suspicion toward Snape, and none at all toward the Dark Lord, no matter how much it clearly broke his mother’s heart, but recently, it seemed that he was finally seeing the reality of his situation. Draco has taken to crying in the bathroom that he was going to be murdered.

Harry was as frustrating as he ever was.

Well into his sixth year, he still insisted the best way to handle Dementors is by casting a Patronus charm, which he learned in his third year, as if the Dark Lord hadn’t returned in the interim, as if he did not feel he needed to learn some new tricks.

The letter he did write read:

“My dear friend. You may recall that Potter saved you from the Dementors not so long ago (for which, I must begrudgingly thank him). His essay about them showed me that he might actually be Lily’s son, and not just James Potter with nicer eyes. I ask my students to explain their reasoning, and he explained - correctly - that it protects those around the caster most effectively. Exactly the type of reason she might have given.  Of course, they protect others in a show-offy, attention grabbing way that betrays one’s true identity and weaknesses and gives one away completely (as Severus wrote this, the silver doe he produced only weeks ago came to his mind, and soon vanished), nevertheless, so I had to give him a failing mark.

Perhaps it will please you to know your methods are now Hogwarts curriculum, as I intend to teach my class that to survive a dementor attack, they must “process” their own worst experiences, as you call it. I hope your insight will steer them toward avoiding experiences that cannot be processed, such as sending a dark wizard after a baby and then learning that the baby’s mother is Lily Evans. I will continue to resist the dementors by using occlumency and only allowing the foul creatures access to memories that are merely unpleasant.

I must remind you again, with a heavy heart, that our time is running out. I cannot tell you why, my friend, but you must believe me. Please, let me repay you.”

Again, she asked him only to stretch the time they had together for as long as possible, and again, to do what he could for the poor underage death eater.  _ If only you knew what you were asking me to do,  _ he thought, but did not write.

The dread and horror of the encroaching future were alleviated only by hovering over Harry Potter and Draco Malfoy, or both if he could manage it. When they were in his field of vision, he knew, at least, that they were safe, and so he felt freer to focus on his frustration with then rather than his fear for them.

He was vindicated in the most horrible way when, of all people, Harry Potter himself almost killed Draco.

“Again, I cannot expect too little of Harry Potter. Is he not supposed to be good at Defense Against the Dark Arts? And yet, he decides to try an unknown spell, almost kills his classmate with it, and then just stands there as if a basilisk petrified him! Shows me a glance of his mother and then proves worse than his father, in the space of less than a month! Are you going to say it is natural curiosity again? Shoving his head down the pensieve, trying unknown spells that are intended only for enemies - Oh, how do I know, you must ask yourself.

I know because the spell he used is my own invention, and I wrote it down only in one place. Harry is a poor liar, and a poorer occlumens, and if I have anything to do it, he will spend the rest of his life in detention. He does not know, of course, that he is lying to the only person who knows exactly where it came from, does he? Yes, the sudden brilliance in potions, and at dark magic… turns out that I managed to teach him something after all.

Yes, the useful spell that cuts gashes into the flesh of enemies is my proud creation. This is the darkness and horror that I foolishly unleashed into the world when I was 16. So don’t try to say he was innocent somehow, I have been 16, and 16 is not innocent.

If I hadn’t been there, watching over those two, Potter’s soul would have been instantly corrupted so much the Dark Lord would have inhabited it with ease. Did losing Black teach him nothing? Do you not think ignorance is scarcely a defense?”

Instead of ebbing, Severus’s white hot anger only continued to rise as he wrote, and so he sent the admittedly somewhat unpolished letter as it was and exhaled loudly.

Harry would not even admit now that he has been cheating at potions, and he was saved only by being a good runner and having nerve and audacity that only a Potter could have. Or a “Roonil Wazlib”, of course. The only silver lining was that he felt remorse and horror at having nearly murdered an enemy. He was inexcusably reckless, criminally stupid, but he felt remorse, and who could understand him now better than Severus himself? 

He found himself wondering, suddenly, why was no one there to keep him from corrupting his own soul, why was no one there to warn him that he was about to become a murderer?

_ Right, you idiot. You called her a mudblood. _

Then he knew - Harry Potter was not the perfect James in the play after all. He was miscast. He was playing the boy who suffered a devastating loss less than a year before, and who found strange solace and companionship in the wrong place.

And the play was soon coming to a climactic, tragic end.

“Does this count toward the unbreakable vow, Narcissa?” He thought to himself as he stared at his own hands again.


	26. The Angel in Black

May became June, and Dumbledore’s year wilted down to a month. He seemed unperturbed by this, and in a true Luna Lovegood-esque fashion, on what was to be his last night alive, he seemed to care more about taking the Horcrux Who Lived on a ridiculous mission to seek and destroy another bit of the Dark Lord’s tether to the living world, than about his own demise.

With Albus and Harry gone, the only useful thing left to do was to look out for Draco - but he was nowhere to be found.

In a panic disguised as a plain foul mood, Severus paced around the castle, snarling and barking at everyone who crossed him, and when that (to the surprise of no one) proved futile, he returned to his office to pace there.

Then his left arm began to burn. The despised mark was darker than usual, and yet it seemed to glow. He walked out, of course, two members of Dumbledore’s so-called army were standing outside his office as if they had nothing better to do with their young lives than to cross paths with a death eater when Dumbledore is away.

He warned them of trouble in the seventh floor and hurried to the Astronomy Tower. The Dark Mark shone high above it, and the stone itself shone a sickening green.

He clutched his wand - the real wand - it was burning his hand with urgency.

He climbed the stairs. He could not hear himself think, even though it was disturbingly quiet. He climbed some more stairs, and then some more ( _ Rowena Ravenclaw, why did you have to design such an infernal castle?! _ ), and then some more. Then, there were no more stairs, no way to go but forward, and time stood still for one blessed moment before he opened the door.

He surveyed the room. Death eaters. Draco. Dumbledore. Everyone were alive, still.

A second of eye contact with Draco was enough. He was too overcome to occlude anything at all. He told Severus everything without feeling or knowing he was doing it, through his very own blue eyes:

Draco Malfoy managed to get death eaters into the most magically fortified castle in the world. He had the “great” Dumbledore as good as dead, wandless,  _ powerless _ . But he could not kill. He could not reap what he worked so hard to sow. And Dumbledore had the gall to offer him protection. Dumbledore was the one who needed protection from Draco!

And yet, Draco could not kill, could not complete the task, just when he was so close, he let Dumbledore get in his head, he let him talk himself into chaos and confusion. When Snape and the death eaters came, Draco felt relief intermingled with shame - he failed, but help was here.

Having spent so much time practicing legilimency and occlumency with the Headmaster, a passing glance was enough for Severus to get all the information he needed about what just transpired.  _ Harry is here, under the cloak. Petrified. I offered Draco Protection. Good luck _ . He didn’t need more than the telegraphic message to know what Dumbledore was thinking. He knew Draco was not going to accept the offer; he also knew offering refuge and protection planted a seed that will grow into understanding, one day, that the Dark Lord cared for no one, that everyone were disposable to him, not least Draco himself, whereas Dumbledore was willing to help and protect him and his family unconditionally. By offering forgiveness even as he was being assaulted, the greatest wizard in the world was performing magic that was truly great, despite hardly being magic at all.

Severus had to admit it, just as he was about to end the man’s life - Dumbledore made great mistakes, but he was a great wizard and a great man.

Dumbledore pleaded: “Severus, please…” Severus towered over him, his left arm burning, his wand hand clutching so tight that he thought the wand might break. He looked at Dumbledore.

_ Why did you have to make it so hard at the last moment? Do you truly want me to do it? I can’t do it. I can’t. _

He was certain that Potter must view him as the utmost traitor, the ultimate coward, pointing his wand like that at a defenseless man.

Terrible images from Dumbledore’s mind flashed before Severus, as if they were his own fears. Voldemort was using Dumbledore as an Inferius, forcing his mutilated corpse to do his bidding… He was alive, but the curse weakened him, and Bellatrix was torturing what was left of him... Draco was being punished for his failure and Snape was not there to protect him, because neither of them killed Dumbledore.  _ I get it. I will miss you, Albus. Thank you for everything. Thank you for Figg _ .

He imagined the great wizard as an Inferius as he cast a perfect Killing Curse.

Albus Dumbledore’s body was blasted off from the roof of the tower down to the ground.

Now, a thousand thoughts rushed through him at once.

By killing him on school grounds, he could at least make sure the body was safe. By using the Killing Curse, he knew there was no suffering. He also knew Voldemort’s ideas about the internal mindset required to cast it truly rendered him above suspicion.

But Dumbledore was now gone, and with him, whatever faith the members of the Order and the staff had in him.

And of course, on top of it all, there was the issue of Harry Potter. Realizing that he was petrified by horror and not by magic, Harry Potter rushed heroically to make sure Dumbledore and Lily’s deaths will be in vain. The boy for whom two great souls and however many not so great souls had died could not wait to follow in their footsteps.

They were on the ground, near Hagrid’s hut. He grabbed Draco by the scruff of his neck and cast the shocked boy aside.

Fortunately, he was still unable to close his mind. He was so overcome with raw emotions, base, unsophisticated emotions, that Snape could neutralize him with almost no effort.

It was, in fact, so easy, that he had plenty of time to think. _This is the chosen one? This is the boy who is destined to defeat Lord Voldemort? The boy shouting spells at me even as he knows I already know what counters to use by reading his mind?_ _And he is telling me to fight him? He is as arrogant as when he first got here. Oh Trelawney. What have you done._

And then Potter said the words “kill me like you killed him, you coward”, he said them without thinking them first, and it pierced his heart, hit him harder than any spell in Potter’s limited vocabulary.

“DON’T!”, Severus shouted. He contorted his face, for behind his eyes he was burning, and he was sure he will collapse in tears. If the boy could practice legilimency, he would have seen it all….  _ I did not mean to kill him, I did not mean to kill your father, he died for her, and I did  _ not  _ want to kill Albus… You must die,  Harry - but not now. Only when the time is right _ . But Harry Potter could not practice legilimency, and so he saw nothing. There was only one way to finish the sentence that was not ridiculous: “CALL ME A COWARD!”, he bellowed like a beast, wishing he could say what he meant: “DON’T DIE FOR THE OLD FOOL”.

The death eaters came, and they cruciated Harry, closing in on him, about to capture him. Severus shook the sudden fit of nostalgia. He reminded the death eaters that Potter belongs to the Dark Lord, thought to himself,  _ Forgive me yet, Lily? _ , and escaped with the young Malfoy.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Turns out that I am publishing this almost on the anniversary of the events described in this chapter. I was never a fan of Dumbledore's, but writing this chapter made me think about him a lot and see him in a new light. My love for the character I chose as my protagonist grew as well, and even my love for poor Draco. This is why this chapter was very hard to write - I had to stay faithful to the canon even though I really really didn't want to! Makes me wonder what it felt like for JKR. Please share your thoughts. I am dying for feedback, as as I am about to start working on my version of the event of the Deathly Hallows, it will really help a lot.
> 
> P.S. - Just realized Dumbledore dies on the anniversary of an important night in Muggle history - the night of the long knives. Nice one, JKR


	27. Love, Lily

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> The immediate aftermath of Dumbledore's death.

The deed was done. There were three things Severus had to do so that he could continue on his mission.

First, Number 12, Grimmauld Place, while he still could go back there.

The house was empty, soulless, in a state of advanced disrepair, cared for by no one. Knowing Harry was the owner of the house, and that he was bound to return there at some point, he cast every protective spell he could think of. His mental state was such that this wasn’t saying much at all - there was his wretched inner life again, showing itself at the worst moment - performing the Killing Curse was very difficult magic and he was almost entirely depleted, unable to focus, distracted even by his own heartbeat.

He went into his enemy Sirius Black’s bedroom with a feeling that could be described only as involuntary occlusion. His mind was closed even to himself. The world was not real anymore. In no plausible reality could he saunter into Sirius Black’s bedroom out of his own free will or live to tell the tale.

He opened drawer after drawer, not knowing what he was searching for - clues to hide from the death eaters? Something that could tell him where Harry Potter might go next? Suddenly, he was struck by the face he last saw in Godric’s Hollow, dead - Lily was beaming at him from a photograph, she was shining with happiness even as she was secluded away with James and baby Harry.

The rest of the world looked as if it was reflected back to Severus from a foggy, stained mirror, but Lily’s face in the photo, her smile, her eyes, pierced his heart like an arrow. It started to beat wildly, thumping out of his chest.

He broke down and cried like a child.

There she was, forever young, forever the happy mother of a toddler, and there he was, holding her in the hands that aged 15 years, 15 years that felt like a lifetime.

The photo accompanied a letter. Oh, “Wormy” must have looked a little down alright!

The Ancient and Extinct House of Black had nothing more to offer him. He tore the photograph in half, and took the second page of the letter, containing Lily’s love. “Will you let me leave James and Harry behind this time, Albus, or do I still disgust you?” he thought, as he left. 

The second order of business - he had to take his seat beside the Dark Lord, in recognition of his remarkable achievement of killing a defenseless man who had less than a month to live anyway. The thought made his stomach lurch, but there was no ignoring the Mark’s summons anymore.

He apparated to the Malfoy residence. Now above suspicion, he hoped his stride was that of a victorious person, as he tried to imitate James Potter leaving the Quidditch pitch. The world was again reflected to him from an unclean mirror, and for the second time that night, he opened the door to a room full of death eaters, only this time they were cheering for him.

The seat next to the Dark Lord was empty. He waved at the crowd with the appearance of modesty - or a true display of shame - and took his place as the Dark Lord’s most faithful, his second in command, his  _ favorite _ .

Lily’s picture was in a pocket near his heart, and as they all continued to celebrate he could think only two things: “What am I thinking bringing this here?” and “oh Severus, the 16 year old you would have been ecstatic”.

“Lord Voldemort rewards faithful service”, his master said. “Ask, Severus, and you shall receive”.

Severus shot a look at Bellatrix, who looked away, clearly ashamed - but he decided to be magnanimous toward the poor woman.

“First, I must acknowledge Draco Malfoy’s contribution. Were it not for his faithful service and hard work, I might not have been able to accomplish what I did”. Draco was astonished and Narcissa stared at him with silent gratitude.

“When I was his age, you may recall that I too could not perform the Killing Curse, but we can’t all be the Dark Lord, and I firmly believe this day shows us there is no telling what might become of the younger members of this fine group.”

He paused and looked around the room. Was this enough to make it so the Dark Lord could not kill Draco for no reason? It had to be.

“Second, I wish to start undoing the damage -” his voice broke…  then he continued - “the damage Albus Dumbledore did to the august Hogwarts School of Witchcraft and Wizadry. I wish to be named Headmaster as soon as we take over the Ministry, and to continue to serve the Dark Lord from within the beloved castle.”

Applause broke out. He raised a dignified hand.

“Lastly, though today is a happy day for all of us, we must remember Dumbledore was merely an obstacle we had to eliminate. Eliminating him was only a means to an end, and the end is Harry Potter. I had a chance today to kill him as well, and those who know me can probably guess I was quite tempted - but we must remember he belongs only to the Dark Lord. Let me waste no more of your precious time”.

Applause broke out again, but they were muffled to him, as if coming from another room. He collapsed into his chair. When death eater after death eater asked him to regale the events of the night, he gladly referred them to Draco, hoping that retelling the story will help Draco remember what Dumbledore was willing to do for him, and that he was not a murderer yet.

He left his own party as soon as it was polite to do so.

There was one more thing he had to do - pay one last visit to Arabella Figg.


	28. Last Goodbye

The first time Severus entered this door, he created the duplicate wand that was supposed to facilitate a lie, yet betrayed his internal truth to the person he attempted to lie to, without him realizing it.

He entered the house reluctantly, then, without faith, both closed- and open-minded.

The second time he knocked on that door, he handed his true wand over to the stranger in an act of calculated desperation. He survived the first meeting with the resurrected Dark Lord by the skin of his teeth, by uttering lies so heinous and so utterly convincing he almost believed them. Such was the Dark Lord’s power, at least over Severus - in his presence, under his gaze, nothing made sense except complete devotion.

But she restored his trust in himself, in where his loyalties truly lay, with a simple observation about wandlore and no magic whatsoever, dark or otherwise.

The useless wand he created to lie to her ended up being used to lie to the Dark Lord himself, “the greatest wizard, the most accomplished legilimens the world has ever seen”, while the Squib proved time and time again that it was she to whom one could not lie.

Well, the Squib had served her purpose; he was now about to knock on her door for the last time, as the Dark Lord’s favorite. There was no need to worry about him attempting to get the truth out of Severus again.

It was time to disabuse her of the only lie she insisted on believing, ample evidence to the contrary notwithstanding - that his soul could be saved, that he was worthy of her friendship.

What was one more loss in the grand scheme of things, and in the history of the Prince family in particular?

He knocked. It was an ungodly hour of the night and darkness enveloped and engulfed him and the world.

She opened the door in shock. Dim light from inside the house shone on his face and his arms.

“Severus? What are you doing here?”

He could not give her the wand fast enough. Although they’ve forsaken this little ritual a long time ago, she seized it immediately.

It was vile to him now, the murder weapon, as vile as his mother’s wand must have been to her all those years ago, when she chose to live as a Muggle.

“I killed Albus”.

She went pale. If she was groggy when she opened the door, she was now alert as only a powerless woman who just let a dark wizard into her home could be.

“Yes.” Severus said.

“Am I…”

“Next? Absolutely not.”

“Then what… but your wand… you were…”

“Aligned with him, yes, I know. I still am.”

He looked away.

“A little less than a year ago, Albus did something immeasurably stupid and put on a cursed ring. I was able to contain the curse, and saved him from dying that very night, but I knew he had a year, no more, and of course, notified him of that fact.”

“What was…” she interrupted, almost inaudibly.

“Please let me finish”, he pleaded with her.

“A plot to assassinate Albus was already brewing, as now there were two death eaters at Hogwarts, myself and the child I told you about. The child was supposed to attempt it first but I do not believe he was intended to succeed. Somehow - do not ask me how - Dumbledore knew about the plot, and he insisted that I do it when the time comes.

The time came today. I’m so sorry, Arabella, I’m…”

He could not talk or look at her anymore.

Was she shocked? Sad? Angry? Incredulous? He could not bear to find out; instead, he fixed his gaze on a far corner as if pondering the magical properties of porcelain tile.

“Severus, look at me. What would have happened to him if the curse had been allowed to spread?”

She had to be kidding. What difference did it make now?

“Are you going to say anything to acknowledge that you are sitting beside a murderer?”

She was on the verge of tears. “Just humor me,” she said.

“His hand was already black and lifeless by the time I got to him. I don’t know fast it would have been, but I assume parts of him would have died as the curse progressed, causing him immense pain and torturing his mind until the cursed reached a vital organ, or perhaps even after that. Happy?”

She was not happy.

In fact, she chose this moment to break down and cry, and hide her face in shame as if she was the killer.

“Oh, I wish I.. how could I have been this stupid…”

What on earth was she talking about?

Severus found himself patting her.

Finally, she regained her composure.

“I must seem barking. I’m so sorry. Look, it’s John, my husband. He had cancer, and… at first I was too proud to ask any wizard for help, and then he was too scared, and then it was too late. If I could have done what you did for him… (“For? Not  _ to him _ ?” Severus asked himself) He suffered so much, Severus, and I never even thought of using magic to let him die with dignity. You must think I’m a complete and utter fool…”

He held up her face and looked in her eyes. They darted in every direction, but finally, their eyes met.

“I cannot find fault with you not wanting some dark wizard killing him, if that wasn’t obvious for some reason”.

She smiled, one of those reluctant smiles that the rest of one’s face did not cooperate with, yet were completely sincere. 

“To be honest, it sounds like whoever cursed the ring killed Albus, not you”, she said.

“I have my suspicions, but whoever did this did not intend to kill Dumbledore, specifically. And Dumbledore must have known it was cursed. He was Dumbledore, after all. No. He killed himself.”

Did she absolve him? Was she still willing to call him her friend?

As surely as June became July, she did.

“I am glad he introduced us before he did.” She said. “Why do you think he-”

“I don’t know. He had to stop me once or twice from killing myself, you know. But… I guess we’ll never know”.

It was a good a time as any to tell her - it was not Dumbledore who made him give her another chance.

“To be perfectly accurate, it was the Dark Lord who pushed me to you. The night he returned, I returned to him, on Albus’s orders of course, and he…” his insides screamed: “He tortured me, and he humiliated me, and I was forced to beg him and worship him, and when he read my mind I believed my own lies, just to survive, and I almost became a faithful death eater again.” His insides continued to scream, while he was silent as the grave: “I loved him, at that moment, as he was doing all these things to me, and the only person I loved more was Lily”. But his face was like stone, mute, inscrutable.

“You don’t have to talk, Severus. I love you.”

It had been hours, mere hours since Harry Potter called him a coward and dared him to fight him, hours since he joined the death eaters as the celebrated murderer, and he walked into Arabella’s house fully intending to leave it with her despising him - but as always, the Squib was full of surprises.

“Things are going to change”, he warned her. “The death eaters are going to take over. You should be grateful the Ministry doesn’t keep records of Squibs, because we - yes, me too - we are going to take over Wizarding Britain. Arabella, you are going to have to leave, tell no one about the Magical world, and stay completely unseen. Do you understand?”

She seemed hurt.

“What do you think Squibs have been doing all this time?” Arabella snapped at him - “Blabbing about the wizarding world to every unsuspecting Muggle we meet and landing ourselves in mental institutions? Do you know how lonely it has been since John, before you came? Wizards send us to live among the Muggles, yet they forbid us to talk of magic, and then deny we exist for good measure! I am going nowhere, and you do what you must. I will keep your secrets.”

There was nothing more to say, except this.

“This is the last time you see me. Please, please, let me do something for you. Anything. Please.”

She spoke, at long last. They embraced, tearful, and he left, determined to fulfill her request, the fact that it defied all sense notwithstanding.

“I love you too”, his insides said, and Severus kicked himself for being too scared to say the words, like always.  



	29. Boggarts

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> It's been a while! I hope you missed me! As usual, I am eager for comments!

The Death Eaters infiltrated almost every department at the Ministry of Magic, using the Imperius Curse, the Confundus charm, Polyjuice, etc., and when these more traditional methods failed, they resorted to plain misinformation, extortion and threats.  
In Severus’s opinion, the mission to place the Imperius curse on Thicknesse was particularly elegant - the Death Eaters placed a Boggart in his office, and Pettigrew, in his rat form, hid there and told them exactly what he saw.  
It was banal, but it was enough - Thicknese’s Boggart was his wife and his Muggle mistress, talking (Pettigrew had many faults but an inability to deliver crucial information to the Dark Lord was not one of them). Yaxley’s job was very easy, after that - all he needed to do was to whisper softly in Thicknesse’s ear: “How is the brunette Muggle?" and the Head of Magical Law Enforcement was so shocked he could not resist the curse in the crucial first moments when one could still shake it.  
Severus’s first encounter with a Boggart was only slightly less of a disaster, in his opinion - it was when he was a second year student.  
They had that class with the Gryffindors, of course - the “brave” house, which Severus thought was not very thoughtful toward the Slytherins.  
His last name started with S, so he was almost last in line behind Black, Evans, Lupin, Pettigrew, Potter and others.  
One by one, the students faced their deepest fear, and Severus observed them with greedy curiosity, hoping for something juicy. His classmates’ fears, alas, were all childish and innocent and frankly stupid or borderline bizarre - why was Remus afraid of a white orb? - except Lily’s, of course, fearless Lily, whose Boggart took the form of a Dementor. For a moment, Severus regretted telling her about them and causing her such fear, but she fought the Boggart with ease. Within moments, she had it lift up its hood and reveal the head of a harmless kitten.  
Then it was Severus’s turn, and as soon as Professor Lux called his name his heart was in his throat, for he knew exactly what form his Boggart will take and he kicked himself for sticking around to see everyone’s fears instead of faking some sort of medical emergency and getting the hell out of the classroom.  
Sure enough, the revolting image of a man who looked like a grown up Severus Snape - Tobias, of course - appeared before the entire class, all rage and hate and prejudice, and Severus did not know what to do, why won’t the ground open up and swallow him, or where he could look where his eyes won’t be met with mockery.  
He seemed to look at the classroom from above.  
Lily was white as a sheet, as she looked at him with an unbearable combination of pity and terror, and as if from a distance, he heard James and his friends roaring with laughter - “I was sure it was going to be shampoo, but I would be scared of growing up to be this ugly too!” James said. “Are you sure it’s a Boggart? I think it’s a mirror with an ageing illusion on it”, Sirius added.  
As soon as he could move his legs, Severus ran away.  
When Severus entered Lupin’s defense class and saw that Neville’s Boggart assumed a shape very similar to Severus’s old Boggart (of course, Neville feared not Snape’s father but Snape himself), he was once again humiliated and mocked by a "Marauder" in the defense classroom, but he had to admit it to himself - he earned it. “If it were up to me,” he thought, “I would have sent the Dark Lord to kill you, Longbottom.” Neville did not even know how right he was to be terrified of his teacher.  
When he was 12 years old, Severus ran away from the Boggart.  
He was 38 now, and running away was not an option. He had so many fears now, Occluding a Boggart was impossible, and very few of his fears were of a nature he could explain away to the Dark Lord. He wondered - will it be Harry’s corpse? Will it be Lily’s spirit rightly blaming him for her death? Will it be Arabella, killed by a member of the Order after Severus somehow revealed their friendship?  
He knew what he had to do to prevent this particular fear from coming true. It was almost as scary as the fear coming true, but he knew from experience that his greatest fear of all was his fear of killing his friend, and it could not come true a second time. Arabella had no children he could dedicate his life to protecting when she died.  
Protecting her from the Death Eaters was easy - they could not target what they could not be bothered to acknowledge. But the Order did, and even without Dumbledore, it had very powerful members left.  
Thankfully, as the newly appointed Headmaster of Hogwarts, he now had a very spacious office in which to do what he had to do to prevent the Order from ever getting to her.


	30. The Headmaster's Office

Magic gave one many ways to conceal one's identity, but it had many ways of revealing one's identity as well, of exposing one's true nature, of bringing one's inner life to the surface. The gargoyles guarding the headmaster's office, for example. Severus desperately needed to access the office, yet he was scared when the stone door opened and allowed him in.

“If any of the staff members are as observant as you, Arabella, they will remember that the doors didn’t open for Umbridge...” He thought. Again, his inner life bubbled up to the surface, overflowing, like potion that’s been allowed to boil for too long, just like Dumbledore always knew it might.

He entered the office that recognized him as its legitimate occupant, despite his unsavory involvement in vacating it of its previous resident.

The previous headmasters' portraits started him solemnly.

He sat at the desk, Dumbledore’s desk, and he was overcome.

He spent so many hours in the seat that was now facing him, on the receiving end of Dumbledore’s drivel and his absurd theories that somehow always turned out to be correct.

He remembered sitting in this office, and Albus telling him about an idea he had that might help him Occlude more easily.

He drew out his wand and summoned the enchanted two-way box.

Next, he summoned the duplicate wand and a small vial containing the potion Arabella asked for, and wrote her a note.

“My dear Arabella, I must now truly say goodbye. I am going to vanish my box, so do not make this harder than it has to be by writing anything more. I love you. I could not have done this without you. Severus.”

He wrapped the note around the vial and placed it and the wand he produced with the Geminio charm in the box.  
Next, he summarily vanished the box and it was gone, as if it never was.

“At least your last words to her were better than ‘filthy little Mudbloods like her’”, he thought to himself.

He cried as he witnessed the now barren surface where the precious box stood moments ago. 

Inside the stone walls of his new office, the walls around his heart finally collapsed as he cried breathlessly, openly, pathetically, for everyone he lost (not least among them, himself), and for what he was about to lose. He did not know if minutes or hours passed in tears but at some point he finally stopped crying. His voice was hoarse, his eyes regained their dry focus and air filled his lungs again.

It was time.

He touched his true wand (for the other one was now presumably somewhere in Arabella’s living room) to his neck, just below his chin, and looked up.

“What are you doing, Severus? Don’t. You don’t have to. Stop.” Albus’s portrait said to him.

“Fuck off, Dumbledore”, Severus said, and closed his eyes.

Scared as he was, his hand was steady, and he whispered: “Obliviate”, in his softest and most loving tone. Every experience, every emotion, and every thought involving his infinitely brave, bright, cunning and caring Arabella Figg was gone from his mind.

Arabllea may have defied Severus’s request and wrote him back. She may have written “Thank you” or “I won’t forget you”, but whatever it was, if it was at all, was to remain right where she put it and never reach its destination.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Well, writing that made me sad.
> 
> I imagine Severus pointing the wand at the base of his skull like a gun, and I get very upset for him.


	31. Headmaster Snape

Severus found himself inside the headmaster’s office, with no recollection of how he got there and no idea why his (his) desk was wet.  
The portraits looked at him with sadness and confusion that matched his own.   
He could not venture to guess why his nose was stuffed and where the last minutes of his life went. Or was it hours?

But the castle evidently recognized him and it was time to get to work.

The Gargoyles appeared to him to be more sentient now that he was Headmaster. Their eyes seemed to be looking back at him when he told them: “If Harry Potter ever comes in here, you are to let him in whatever password he shouts at you, and eject anyone else who might be here but me out of this room. No one else may enter without my express permission.”

Headmaster Snape’s second act was to protect the Muggle-born students the only way the Dark Lord might approve of.

Somewhere in Britain, surely, there was a Muggle-born and a half-blood who were waiting for their letters together, counting down the days until September 1st together, and perhaps the half-blood was just now telling his best friend about the houses and the classes and that blood purity doesn’t matter. Or perhaps the Muggle-born was saving up her allowance that summer so that she could try every different flavor of ice cream when she (Severus could only picture her as a she) finally goes to Diagon Alley. Maybe she was upset about Dementors as if anybody in their right mind would want to hurt her.

But this year’s Severus and Lily were to be Severed. Just like Severus undid his own friendship with the original Lily, he was about to sever this one, that had to be blossoming somewhere, and the two eleven year olds’ notions that blood status is meaningless were to be changed forever, because Headmaster Snape was not going to admit the Muggle-borns this year. His heart broke for the Lily who was dreaming of Hogwarts with that starry-eyed expression, full of wonder and delight (“Nobody will call me names there”, she might be thinking). It even broke for the young wizard who could not believe his luck when he spotted a kind, beautiful and incredible witch in the middle of his Muggle-ridden town.

But it was better than admitting her and letting her into the magical world just as Lord Voldemort was about to conquer it, perhaps once and for all. 

“I wish it didn’t matter, Lily. I always believed it will be different for you, you were so good.” He said aloud, protected behind the stone walls. All the names of the would-be first-year Muggle-borns were erased from the book of admissions.

There was no stopping the ones who were already admitted from returning, but that was a problem for another day.

Headmaster Snape had a Dark Lord to pretend to serve, and Harry Potter’s 17th birthday was coming up. Dumbledore’s portrait seemed to know what he was thinking. “You will have to give Voldemort the correct date of Harry’s departure from his aunt and uncle’s,” said Dumbledore. “Not to do so will raise suspicion, when Voldemort believes you so well informed. However, you must plant the idea of decoys; that, I think, ought to ensure Harry’s safety. Try Confunding Mundungus Fletcher. And Severus, if you are forced to take part in the chase, be sure to act your part convincingly. . . I am counting upon you to remain in Lord Voldemort’s good books as long as possible, or Hogwarts will be left to the mercy of the Carrows. . . ”

Yes, the Dark Lord still did not trust him so much that he left him in charge of staffing at the school.  
The Carrows, a pair of inbred sadists, will be roaming the school making Dolores Umbridge look like Pomona Sprout. But they, too, were a problem for another day.

He Confunded the sneak thief Fletcher (whom he hated viscerally now but could not, for the life of him, tell why). Now, he finally had something to give the Dark Lord at the next assembly of Death Eaters, and it was just as well, because the Dark Mark was pulsating under his skin like a second heart.


	32. Wreckers of All But the Best-Laid Plans

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> This chapter corresponds with the chapter "The Dark Lord Ascending", Chapter 1 of Deathly Hallows - so I once more had to copy JKR's dialogue, but you will see that I tell it from Severus's perspective. I think this is the longest chapter yet so I hope you bear with me.
> 
> TW: cult, threatened rape

Severus apparated to the Malfoy Manor.

He was not alone. “News?”, asked Yaxley. “The best”, Severus replied.

Yaxley went on and on about his task, gaining control of Pious Thicknesse.  _ You didn’t realize being on top for once in your sad life meant people will want to talk to you so much, did you, Severus? Won’t you shut up, Yaxley? _ Severus thought to himself as the pair walked the gravel path along the beautiful garden leading to the magnificent manor.

Severus found that being second in command made Yaxley copy him, walk in the same pace as him, even hesitate for a moment before entering the room - though of course, Severus was Occluding, and Yaxley was simply mimicking him. 

They entered. Severus knew the Malfoy Manor very well, so he could tell the decor was different right away. It was the Muggle Studies professor revolving over Draco’s head. Subtlety was never one of the Dark Lord’s strengths. “Yaxley, Snape. You are very nearly late”.

The Dark Lord was sitting by the fire, looking so much like a snake that he might as well have been dependent on it to keep warm - in the middle of July. That everybody else in the room were perfectly able to produce their own body heat and were thus perspiring profusely meant nothing to Lord Voldemort, and  _ Lucky me, I get to sit right beside him near the fire _ , Severus thought.

“So?” The Dark Lord inquired.

“My Lord, the Order of the Phoenix intends to move Harry Potter from his current place of safety on Saturday next, at nightfall.”

Everyone listened. Everyone stared. Severus was not used to Occluding this many people at once - but numbers made no difference.

The Dark Lord repeated the statement, and fixed his piercing gaze upon Severus’s eyes so intently, the others looked away. But Severus was not lying, his heart wasn’t beating, his brow was sweating only from the heat… “Good. very good. And this information comes—”

“—from the source we discussed,” said Snape.

Yaxley, the sycophant, who moments ago aped Snape down to the gait, was now trying to undermine him. “My Lord, I have heard differently,” he said. “Dawlish, the Auror, let slip that Potter will not be moved until the thirtieth, the night before the boy turns seventeen.”

Again, Yaxley went on and on about - this time, about how misinformed Snape is, and Snape wanted so badly to just leave it be and  _ let  _ them miss the correct date of Harry Potter’s departure from safety, but he could not. Finally, the Dark Lord got to the point.

“I shall attend to the boy in person. There have been too many mistakes where Harry Potter is concerned. Some of them have been my own. That Potter lives is due more to my errors than to his triumphs.” As the Dark Lord said these words, he was looking up, and so, Severus was free to think his own thoughts.  _ The only mistake was mine, bringing you the prophecy. That Potter lives is actually due to me. What are you playing at, Severus? Focus. Occlude. You are a faithful Death Eater and you want to see Harry Potter dead. _

“I have been careless, and so have been thwarted by luck and chance ( _ and me _ ), those wreckers of all but the best-laid plans. But I know better now. I understand those things that I did not understand before. I must be the one to kill Harry Potter, and I shall be. ( _ Precisely, my Lord. _ )”

Charity Burbage was screaming above them in agony. The Dark Lord ordered Pettigrew to silence her and continued. “... I shall need, for instance, to borrow a wand from one of you before I go to kill Potter.” The room was silent. It was a test of devotion. “No volunteers?” said Voldemort. “Let’s see . . . Lucius, I see no reason for you to have a wand anymore.”

Severus never saw Lucius so defeated. He had the complexion, the voice, and the overall demeanor of someone who hasn’t slept in days. Weeks. A pathetic attempt to negotiate, and then - he gave him his wand. The Dark Lord studied the wand carefully, but not so carefully that he missed the fact that for a fraction of a second, Lucius Malfoy’s eyes turned toward Lord Voldemort’s own. Lucius was not used to not having his way, but he was learning fast.

“Give you my wand, Lucius? My wand? I have given you your liberty ( _ some liberty,  _ Snape thought), Lucius, is that not enough for you? But I have noticed that you and your family seem less than happy of late . . . What is it about my presence in your home that displeases you, Lucius?”

“Nothing—nothing, my Lord!”

“Such lies, Lucius . . . ”

The Dark Lord continued to force Lucius Malfoy to express his endless gratitude and love for Lord Voldemort.

He knew Lucius was lying, yet he continued to force him to say the words, reveling in the fact that he had such power over him. It was more painful to watch than anything Snape could imagine, as the great snake Nagini crawled up - she was so heavy her movements caused the chairs to shake - and slithered up to the Dark Lord’s shoulder. She always seemed restless when the Dark Lord was excited about something.

Severus recalled the wretched humiliation he felt the night he returned to the Dark Lord a little over two years ago. The Dark Lord forced him to beg for forgiveness, to offer him his regret and his love and anything remotely human about him, to offer himself to his master even as his master was tormenting him. Then he remembered nothing, and his consciousness slipped away from the reminiscence, and Severus found himself fully aware of the present moment yet feeling nothing of it, only the stiffness that comes after one endures great pain.

The Malfoys seemed to have learned to avoid their master’s gaze as if it was a basilisk.

Lord Voldemort controlled his followers beyond what even the Imperius Curse could do. He controlled their most basic gestures, their most fundamental functions, from where they dared to look to the temperature of their bodies. 

But of course, there was one person for whom every chance to demonstrate her love to her master was treasured. Bellatrix spoke to him, from down the table, the distance unbearable to her. “It is an honor to have you here, in our family’s house. There can be no higher pleasure.” She said it, and she meant it.

Yet he toyed even with her. Was there anyone the Dark Lord will not humiliate? He taunted her about her niece’s marriage to the werewolf, relentlessly, mercilessly. He ordered her to account for it, ordered her time and again to choose him over her family, and this was somehow even worse than what he did to Lucius because she was not lying.

Severus remembered what he was forced to say, to think, to get his master to spare Lily. “If you let her live for a little while, my Lord, I will have her begging to die”, he said, about Lily. 16 years passed and it was still revolting. “I plan,” he said, with a smile on his face, “to alternate between Cruciatus and Imperius on her until we see what she responds to best”. The Dark Lord forced him to describe how he was going to rape Lily and Severus hated himself for it, still. “I will finally get what the mudblood always denied me.” It was sick, and the scene unfolding before him was almost just as sick.

In the sweltering heat, after humiliating Bellatrix for at least 20 straight minutes, he suddenly offered a path toward regaining his approval. It was almost inspiring - he drove his faithful follower to despair and immediately, with the other hand, offered salvation. But there was only one way. His way.

“Many of our oldest family trees become a little diseased over time ( _ Indeed they do _ ). You must prune yours, must you not, to keep it healthy? Cut away those parts that threaten the health of the rest.” 

“Yes, my Lord,” whispered Bellatrix, and her eyes swam with tears of gratitude again. “At the first chance!”

“You shall have it,” said Voldemort. “And in your family, so in the world. . . we shall cut away the canker that infects us until only those of the true blood remain . . . ”

And then the Dark Lord turned to Severus. “Do you recognize our guest, Severus?” The “guest” screamed in terror. The “guest” must have not been paying attention, for if she did, she would have known she had no chance. No hope. None at all.

Charity Burbage begged Severus to help her, begged him as if she believed there was more to him than a Death Eater, that he was brave, that he might save her, that he might get away with it. But at that moment he was nothing but a Death Eater, and as much as he longed to escape the moment by any means necessary, he could not get himself killed just yet.

Green light filled the room.

“Dinner, Nagini”, the Dark Lord said, and the snake opened her jaw impossibly wide and swallowed Charity Burbage, slowly but completely, her feet, then her ankles, and her knees, and her waist, and her chest, and shoulders, and her head, the ends of her hair disappeared into the snake as the snake closed its enormous mouth. Severus suddenly realized he was cold. Everyone else must have been as well. A stomach-turning, blood-freezing, Charity Burbage-sized bump was making its way through the snake and every Death Eater must have felt what Severus felt:  _ This could be me. _

The Dark Lord was closer to victory than he ever was before, closer than ever to Harry Potter’s annihilation, to taking over Britain and the world, and yet he was more paranoid and controlling than ever before.

No one was safe. Not one.


	33. The Redeeming Dream

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> This doesn't really move the plot along so readers who don't like a lot of inner-life stuff can skip this one. Severus's mind is trying to cope with the enormous loss it can't explain and the sudden difficulty occluding, and in the wake of Charity's murder, it can't be easy...

The last bit of Charity was gone. The snake was sated, and so was the Dark Lord.

In a room full of dry throats, every swallow was audible, every heaving breath Bellatrix took in an effort to control her excitement echoed… then someone - whoever it was, Snape could kiss him - started clapping and broke the silence and the tension, and everyone celebrated the uncharitable world to come.

At last, they were allowed to leave, but not before Snape was named one of the select few who will capture and deliver Harry Potter to him “on Saturday next, at night fall”.

Severus returned to his childhood home at Spinner’s End.

He was no good on a broomstick - neither of them were, he and Lily. At Hogwarts, as a student, he loved Quidditch more than anything else, because while the whole school was watching the game, they used to sneak away together, steal precious hours away from it all, and sit by the lake or in the library… and they were, for once in their lives, the normal ones in a school obsessed with bludgers and snitches.

With no one to call him Snivellus or hex him, with no one to express the constant, tiresome surprise at her parentage (or constant self-congratulation at how not surprised they were), they were only Lily and Severus.

_ Stop it. Stop it. _

For days, ever since he found himself at the Headmaster’s office not remembering walking in, his mind has been like that, regurgitating memories at him.  _ You are weak, you are pathetic, you are useless. _

He was terrible on a broomstick on a good day, but the Dark Lord insisted on including him in the mission and he could not refuse. The fact that he developed an inexplicable aversion to thinking about Privet Drive made no difference. 

And the rush of memories… everything he tried to failed. He was being worse than Harry Potter. He could not control them. He paced around the house in Spinner’s End, where so many bad memories were formed, but also, where he last had both his mother and his Lily.

“This is where he threatened to send her to a mental institution if she does not shut up about magic in front of the ‘good for nothing son of mine, he is enough of a freak as it is, Eileen’, this is where you and Lily hid when she petrified him… And here, you got your letter. And your mother explained to you that she will not be taking you to Diagon Alley because she is not welcome in the magical world… ‘but you will be, Severus, Darling, it will all be alright…’”

And every minute, between one childhood memory not worth having and the next, the snake, engulfing Charity, and him just sitting there looking thoroughly pleased.

_ Oh Merlin, and the things you said about Lily, all these years ago, and what was your plan, anyway, spend the rest of your life with her on the run from the Dark Lord? Did you expect her to run away with you after you got her precious James and Harry killed? She is better off dead, better off where she is, without you… _

Severus lay on his bed, closer to passing out than to falling asleep, and he did not bother to empty his mind, for the house was empty, he got his solitude at last, and his memories and experiences swelled to fill the empty rooms and he knew he could not contain them.

He drifted in and out of a nightmare, Lily was screaming, “Take me, not him, not Harry, please, take me instead”, and Severus was Voldemort, and suddenly, Harry became Lily and and Lily became Severus and he was begging Voldemort to take him, not her, and he woke up.

_ It’s what you should have done. But you trusted him. He promised her to you. After all, you gave him the prophecy. It was only fair. Dying then would have been so perfect, wouldn’t it have, Lily? _

And there was Dumbledore, disgusted with him, on the cursed hill where he said he will do anything, and Dumbledore’s face showed Severus exactly what he allowed himself to become, and how much Lord Voldemort corrupted him. And then here was Dumbledore again, asking him what use would he be if he died.

It hasn’t been this way in years, so why was his mind acting like he just lost her? Why was his mind suddenly so unyielding, so compulsive, so  _ sloppy _ ? If he wanted to get through the days until Saturday the next, he knew he had to empty his mind somehow, and the only way he could do it was to imagine, over and over and over again, himself shielding Lily with his body, so close he can smell her, and telling her ‘don’t worry, I’m not scared, it’s alright, it’s OK”, and then the green light comes and he is gone, and Lily knows, and she forgives him.


	34. The Battle and the Bottle

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I had no idea how I was going to make this chapter interesting from a Snape POV but it ended up being quite enjoyable to write, so I hope it's a fun read too :)

You’re flying. More confident on a broomstick than you ever were in school.

You are one of them. A Death Eater. You even bought a bottle of Firewhiskey and told them all you will drink it to celebrate when Harry Potter dies. You are on the winning team. You outnumber the Order almost two to one, and if you must capture no less than 7 Harry Potters, you will capture them all and deliver them to the Dark Lord to kill.

It is unfortunate, but you only have eyes for one of them. Sadly, you don’t know which one. You choose one of the Harrys who looks at home on a broomstick - the one who reminds you the most of James, really, the one you most sincerely believe could, at any moment, _Levicorpus_ you without provocation, and you focus on him.

Another Death Eater made a target of this pair and he moves in on the Harry, and of course Harry’s pathetic spellwork doesn’t slow him down… the Death Eater is close, impossibly close, and you aim at his wand hand and whisper “Sectumsempra”, and the Death Eater remains quite intact, slowed down only by the spurt of blood gushing forth from the side of Harry Potter’s head. The world goes black . You killed Harry Potter. _I killed Harry Potter_. You are almost about the lose your grip on the broomstick and fall to your death, finally, your eyes closed, your sweaty, shaking hand touching the handle only barely, and…. “I found the real one”, someone shouts. You open your eyes and hold on.

 

You are a Death Eater, and for all intents and purposes, you want Harry Potter dead. You fly in the same direction as your master, the Dark Lord, toward the Harry Potter who just outed himself by shouting “Expelliarmus”.

 _You_ taught him that. So you killed him after all, it only took you 6 years. But no, he is not dead yet, and you must hang on. He has always been stupefyingly lucky. He might make it out alive after all.

 

You hear Dark Lord say the words, “Aveda Kadavra”, just like in the nightmares (dreams?) you’ve had all week. Green light. It is over. But the wand, Harry’s wand, does not allow the curse to land. It does things no wand has ever done before, things you are certain Harry Potter cannot do, and your master is furious. Your heart is pounding, pounding so powerfully you feel it in your temples. Somebody will pay for this escape, and it might be you, because you didn’t tell him about the decoys. You will have to look him in the eyes and say you didn’t know, and this time there will be no hiding behind irony, half-truths, or overwhelming emotions - you simply have to lie, or you die today.

You realize you did not prepare for this. Did you not expect to live long enough to need to lie to Voldemort again, or did you subconsciously hope he will kill you?

Hagrid’s motorbike is gone. Harry Potter lives, and so must you. You inhale, and you exhale.

*********

The Death Eaters continued to fly, circling their master, none of them daring to be the first to say they lost. The boy escaped. Lucius’s wand did not work.

They flew solemnly, their bodies floating, their hearts sinking. Any slower, and they would all have lost their balance and fell. But they all had to stay close to their master, who was staying afloat without requiring a broomstick.

They did not capture a single Potter, not one, to torture for information or to use as bait. They somehow lost - lost! - the half-giant.

*********

You did not know about the decoys, you tell yourself. You imagine the meeting with Fletcher just as it was, except it is him telling you Harry Potter will be moved on “Saturday the next”, and you picture him hurrying to get up and walk away. This is what happened. This is what happened. Your mother will be just fine alone with the Muggle bastard when you go to Hogwarts. Sirius Black did not lure you into the Shrieking Shack to be attacked by a werewolf. You love the Dark Lord, and you did not know about the decoys.

 

The Dark Lord starts to descend and you follow him. You are on solid ground. You look guilty. You failed him. “My Lord. I did not know. I should have known”.

He looks at you hatefully. They all do. You looked so confident when you told them the date. Yaxley is actually licking his lips.

If you punish yourself, he might let it go.

You drop to your knees and you look up, up into his eyes, like you looked at Dumbledore all these years ago - but that was to save her and this is just to save you. “What have you to say for yourself, Severus?”, the Dark Lord asks. From his mouth, the name Severus sounds like a snake hiss.

“Forgive my ignorance. Forgive my carelessness. I did not know. I did not think…”

He raises a hairless eyebrow. You lower yourself still.

You are almost kissing the ground he stands on.

“My Lord, you will get him. You will kill him. You must.”

He tells you to get up. You obey.

“My clever Death Eaters found the real Harry Potter in the end. Your carelessness caused us no harm. I fault the wand. Or rather, its master.” You shudder. “Lucius!” He shouts. Everyone now faces Lucius, who was forced to fly without a wand.

“Did you tamper with the wand?”

“Never, never, my Lord,” Lucius says, imploring. He is not lying, and his master knows it.

He looks at him with hatred and contempt. He hands him back his wand. “A useless wand for a useless wizard”, he says, and he disappears with a crack.

You make it to Spinner’s End. You pour yourself the very expensive Firewhiskey. It set you back by more galleons than you care to count, and it is wasted on you. But you’re not saving for your retirement.

You raise a bitter glass “to the boy who lived”, who will get to become a man, and when you swallow, you say to yourself you never understood what was so great about Ogden’s Firewhiskey.


	35. The Sword of Gryffindor

The two Gryffindors were one thing, but the Ravenclaw… weren’t they supposed to be intelligent?

Of course, the Ravenclaw in question was Luna Lovegood, whose brand of intelligence was an acquired taste at best, and she was strange even compared with the rest of her housemates.

Severus caught Longbottom guarding the hallway leading to his office, Luna trying to reason with the Gargoyles, and Ginny Weasley on her broomstick outside his window. Of course, none of them were able to get in.

“If you need to enter my office so desperately, then by all means do come in,” he said to the three dunderheads. To her credit, the Weasley girl, who could have flown away, flew in through the window to take her punishment with her friends.

“I take it that the commotion Mr. Finnigan raised was intended to lure me out of here. Shall I write that you viciously forced him to do it?” he said with a smile.

Whether or not this was true was of no consequence to him - he was not going to give Finnigan detention, and he knew the Gryffindors will lap up the bait.

To her credit, again, Weasley lapped it up first and confirmed the theory Snape invented to minimize the paperwork. She should have tried to look more like the Headmaster was on to her shameful scheme and less like she was fiercely protecting someone else, but Headmaster Snape allowed himself to be fooled.

“Very well. Now, pray tell, what business have you three in my office?” he asked them, only so that he could say to himself he tried to ask them.

He looked at Lovegood, who typically refused to acknowledge the reality of the situation she was in. She looked at the ceiling, though not quite interested enough to crane her neck up, surely about to say something about there being too many wrackspurts in his office.

She was indifferent to an infuriating degree, and her blue protruding eyes told him absolutely nothing.  _ I suppose being completely oblivious is also an effective method for Occluding _ . 

He moved on to Longbottom.

A wide smile crept across his face. “What on earth do three teenagers need the Sword of Gryffindor for?”

Neville blushed.

“Well?” Snape inquired, his impatience growing.

“Oh, he doesn’t know, you creep!”, Weasley shouted.

“That’s Headmaster Creep to you, Weasley”, he said silkily, and took that as his cue to move on to her. “I suppose you do know?”

Her head jerked in every direction, avoiding his gaze.

“Look me in the eyes, silly girl, or it's veritaserum”, he threatened, and Ginny reluctantly held still. She refused to give Headmaster Snape an excuse to touch her face or give her anything to drink.  _ Good girl _ . She tried to look up, or down, or side to side, but there was no escaping his empty black eyes.

Unbidden memories of Harry telling her Dumbledore left him the Sword came to the front of her mind, but of course, Severus already knew that… and the most recent memory she had of Harry Potter was finding out he was no longer hiding at Grimmauld Place.

Severus was disheartened.

She did not know where he was. How was he going to get the real Sword to Harry?

“So your brilliant plan was to hang on to it for your boyfriend until you see him?!” He shouted at her. “He’s not my…”, she interrupted, as if that was the salient point. “Quiet, Weasley! Or did you intend to use the priceless, historic artifact to inscribe ‘Harry and Ginny’ forever into the desks of the Gryffindor common room?”

He broke eye contact with her. He paced around the room.

“I must ask you to reconsider going on such ill-advised missions without your friend Miss Granger,  _ if _ she is still alive. Knowing her, I am sure she would have felt compelled to inform you that the Sword of Gryffindor only presents itself under conditions that require valor,  _ not  _ stupidity.”

He made sure they all looked good and defeated before he continued.

“Detention, all three of you, at the Forbidden Forest, with the half-gia… Professor Hagrid. Weasley, you are banned from visiting Hogsmeade. Out, all three of you.”

“But why…”, the infinitely stupid girl protested. Even Luna urged her to get up and leave while the going was good.

“50 points from Gryffindor, and if you do not leave immediately, I will add another pale and freckled ear to my collection, Weasley”.

They scrambled out, and the stone door closed behind them much too slowly for Severus’s taste.

“What are you all staring at?!” He barked at the portraits.

“What do you mean by ‘another ear’?” Dumbledore inquired. 

“Albus, SHUT UP!”

“The portraits are honor-bound to assist you, Severus. You can trust them. You can trust the castle.”

“I played my part a little too well and relieved George Weasley of his ear,” said Severus, and Dumbledore finally shut up.  _ Headmaster Creep, indeed _ , Severus thought to himself.


	36. Cruciatus

**_A/N: I'm sorry this is going into magic snuff territory, and it also runs a bit long, but Snape's time is running out and I want to squeeze what I can out of the time he has left._ **

 

 _Why are the Gryffindors always suicidal_ , Severus asked himself as he summoned a Gryffindor of the self-destructive persuasion to his office.

The idiot Longbottom boy told the Carrows off in no uncertain terms, outright refused to follow their orders to torture his classmates, and Snape informed them, to their frustration, that he will punish him in person.

He entered his office. Neville was already there - the trusty gargoyles expected him.

The stone door closed behind him.

He smiled his most ominous smile, but the boy, the aurors’ son, did not flinch.

 “Neville Longbottom,” Headmaster Snape addressed him, savoring the name, “I look fondly back at the days when I only needed to threaten to poison your little toad with your potions to scare you.” Neville looked him straight in the eyes. “I’m not scared of you,” he said.

“There is no need to lie, Longbottom. I saw your Boggart. Whatever did happen to that toad?”

“Amycus stepped on him, _Sir_.”

“Professor Carrow.”

Snape paced around the room. Every step resounded.

“As your unlucky teacher, I soon learned that fear was the only thing that could possibly motivate you. I am worried that even that is now failing your teachers.”

“Your are quite right, Headmaster.”

Snape continued to pace, and then stopped, abruptly.

“Might I ask, Neville, what are you doing here? Is it your grandmother’s deepest desire to have no family left outside of St. Mungo’s? It is painfully clear to me that you do not belong here. If you do not leave, I’m afraid your life here will be very unpleasant.” Neville was stone-faced. “You are a pure-blood,” Snape went on. “I do not wish this for you.”

_Just like the Dark Lord, kindness - then land the blow._

“I’m staying right here, Headmaster, and I will not use Cruciatus on my friends.”

“Very well. You will serve your detention here, with me, starting tomorrow. Let us see if I can make you change your mind. I think I know who is best equipped to teach it to you.”

He smiled again, sat at his desk, and started writing.

“Dear… Bellatrix…” he read aloud. “I require… your memory… of your last … meeting with… Frank… and Alice… Longbottom… for educational… purposes. There.”

Finally, the look of fear Snape knew so well blossomed on Neville’s face.

“Tomorrow. 7 PM. Out.”

The return owl came the next day, carrying the vial containing the memory of a crime so horrendous, Mr. Crouch sent his own son to Azkaban for it.

Severus spilled the contents of the vial into the Pensieve, and entered the memory.

Bellatrix was there, and so were Barty, Rabastan, and Rodolphus. They lured the aurors into a trap, an anonymous owl bearing information about "Barty Crouch’s whereabouts. Two celebrated aurors must have looked like more than enough to combat a boy who was fresh out of Hogwarts.

The four Death Eaters stationed themselves in different rooms and waited.

Frank and Alice came in.

“Expelliarmus”, Rodolphus shouted from another room, and as they turned to see where the voice was coming from, they were situated right in Rabastan’s line of vision, and Rabastan cast a blinding curse. The Aurors fumbled for each others’ hands and held on.

Finally, Bellatrix entered the scene.

“Where is he?” She cried out.

“Where is who? Is that Bellatrix?”

“The Dark Lord, of course! We are his servants, his most faithful followers, and if you help us find him and restore him, we might spare you his wrath.”

“You-know-who is gone,” Alice said, but before she could finish, Bellatrix screamed - “Filthy lies!”

If the aurors were impressed, they did not show it.

“The blood-traitor Ministry shill thinks she can fool us!” Rodolphus laughed. “The Dark Lord! Destroyed by a baby! Are we expected to believe that?!”

“Well, he was,” Frank said. “Release us, and we might consider recommending a short sentence.”

“A _sentence_!” Bella howled with laughter. “I am a Black, and the others are LeStranges and Barty Crouch Jr. himself. You can write it in your little auror pad as soon as your eyes recover”.

The blinding curse - _caecus_ required the caster’s uninterrupted focus. That was why Rabastan was silent.

“Do you know,” Bellatrix continued, “I always believed it was your little boy the prophecy was about. It only spoke of a boy who will be born at the end of July.”

Frank whispered something in Alice’s ear. It sounded like “Ignore them, he is gone.” Bellatrix went on. “Join us. That way, when you tell us where our master is and help us restore him, he will know it was not about Little Baby Neville.”

Alice’s unfocused eyes began to shine.

“Or, just to play it safe, when the Dark Lord returns he can kill both children, and he will, Longbottoms.” Barty said. “I, too, always believed the prophecy was about him, not the Mudblood Evans’s boy. But you could change my mind.”

Severus’s heart sank. He remembered how he begged his master to go after Neville, and an overwhelming wave of shame washed over him. He forced himself to continue watching.

“Lord Voldemort is over. Finished. Gone. You can kill us. It won’t make a difference.” Frank informed them flatly. Another suicidal Gryffindor.

That made Bellatrix mad.

“You dare speak the name!  Rabastan, give him his sight back!”

Frank shielded his eyes and narrowed them to slits. “I want you to see everything,” she said with a smile.

“Crucio!” The prodigiously talented Bellatrix lashed out, and Alice collapsed, rolled back her eyes, and screamed.

Rodolphus was delighted: “Music to my  ears, and my Bella is a virtuoso”. Barty magically sealed every exit, even made the walls thicker. “No one is coming in or out, Aurors, and nobody can hear you, so scream to your hearts’ content.”

Frank knew what Alice was made of. She’d faced worse. His eyes scanned the room. “Not so fast,” Rodolphus said, as he trapped his head in a magic cage whence Frank could look only straight ahead, at his tormented wife.

“Crucio!” Bellatrix let out, and Alice’s body levitated as if she was being electrocuted, her neck twisted impossibly back, her back curved almost gracefully. When she dropped to the floor, her mouth was foaming. “Alice!” Frank screamed, and she let out a moan.

“WHERE IS HE?”

Barely concealing his despair, Frank cried: “We don’t know! Let her go, you inbred hag!”

“The inbred hag is twice the witch you or your puddle of a wife ever were,” Barty announced. “You haven’t seen anything. If you don’t want to be wiping drool off her face for the rest of your life, tell us everything. Now.”

Bellatrix sipped on a drink and smiled.

“Blindness enhances every sensation. Including pain. The Dark Lord taught me himself,” she said.

“Frank…” Alice’s hoarse voice came from the floor. “I…”

But “I…” what, Severus never knew, because Bellatrix aimed again, and so did Rodolphus, and Alice’s legs both swelled and turned bright red, and then almost black, and poor Alice’s face showed she was already in another world, her mind escaped her body, and she whimpered. “The swelling would be her nerves misfiring and causing her entire body to fight against her legs. The discoloration is because her body is trying to reject them and cut off blood supply. But it won’t work. Rabastan, give her her sight back. Frank, watch.”

Bellatrix held a feather up to Alice’s panting face, and lowered it along her body, almost sensually. Rodolphus stared at her, obviously aroused - it was the most passionate Severus had ever seen these two toward one another.

As soon as the feather touched the black leg, Alice screamed. “It’s on fire! It’s on fire! Help me! KILL ME, I beg you!”

“Your husband won’t tell us where he is, Love,” Bellatrix said, holding the feather dangerously close to Alice’s skin.

“Finito”, she said, and Alice’s leg returned to normal. Almost. It was still swollen and red. “That is the sign of permanent nerve damage, but if you tell us now, she might lead a normal life with enough opium potion.”

She turned to Alice, taunting her, threatening her with the feather. Alice recoiled in pure terror. The brave woman was already changed forever.

Rodolphus released Frank, and demanded Alice to tell them where the Dark Lord is.

“I don’t… I don’t know… I would have told you if I did, I swear…” she cried, and Frank ran for his wand. Barty blocked him again, and again, and again. “I tire of this,” he declared, finally, and summoned Winky.

“Winky, take these wands somewhere and don’t tell daddy or anybody else.” The innocent elf who was now probably mourning this monster said, “yes, Master Barty”, and Master Barty stroked her head. “That’s a good elf, Winky”, he said, and Winky disappeared with a crack.

Frank’s eyes were wide. All hope was gone. The Aurors’ look reminded Severus of how his mother used to look when she heard Tobias’s key through the door. But that was just the Muggle bastard. Bellatrix was a witch, and she was famous for the strength of her Cruciatus.

They moved on to Frank and Alice watched, watched him suffer like she just did, like she still was, the foaming mouth, the screams, the swelling, discolored limbs…

Frank stopped responding to his own name.

Barty said to her: “He is past the point of no return. If you speak now, Little Neville will have one parent who can recognize him. Where is he, Alice?”

“I don’t know,” she said, and all four of them cruciated Frank, and he ran toward the wall and bashed his head against it repeatedly, trying to pass out. They did the same to Alice shortly thereafter.

The next thing Severus saw was the inside of the Pensieve.

It was nothing new. “Tormented into insanity,” everyone said. “Worse than death, what happened to them,” everyone also said.

It took less than an hour. _Longbottom must know._ Fortunately, Bellatrix could not send a better educational aid.

The Carrows protested this decision, of course. They wanted the boy to themselves. “Don’t fret, Alecto, Amycus. I am certain that he will give you many chances to detain him and punish him. Just bear in mind that he is a pure-blood when you do.” They were not pleased, but Snape did not care. “I will teach Longbottom the Cruciatus curse myself. I already troubled Mrs. LeStrange for advice and she is a much more accomplished witch than you. Get back to work.”

They left, surely to take their frustration out on some defenseless first year.

Neville came at 7. “Welcome to detention, Longbottom,” said the Headmaster, and gestured Neville to come inside. “We have a lot of ground to cover.”

Severus was reminded of Albus and Harry, secluded in this very office for so many hours last year. _How grotesquely history repeats itself_ , he thought, and poured Bellatrix’s memory into the Pensieve again. His left hand invited Neville to look inside the silver bowl.

Neville extracted himself out of the memory much too soon, and much too calmly. “It’s over, Professor”.

“Liar,” Snape said with delight. “For that, you will view the entire memory a second time. Proceed.”

Neville hesitated, but Severus did not - _Neville has to know_. He forcefully gripped the back of his student’s head and shoved his head down, dunking him in the silver liquid with his dominant right hand. This left him free to stare at the Dark Mark and marvel at his own cruelty.

His student thrashed and kicked under him, tightening every muscle. After enough time passed, he allowed Neville to straighten up.

“Now, what did you see?”

Neville was pale, his eyes were hollow - Snape had him good and helpless, like any child witnessing his mother’s torment would be. _And you should know,_ Severus thought, and immediately banished the thought.

“I saw them banging their heads against the wall, Sir.”

“Very good, Longbottom. Now, tell me, how does one cast a Cruciatus?”

“I only know the incantation, Sir, not the theory.”

“Listen very closely, Longbottom. You must mean it. You must will your victim to suffer in this way, you must hate them, yet not want them dead, and you must take pleasure in it. That, I believe, is the case here, but there are other mental states that are conducive to a successful Cruciatus, such as fear for your own life, or another’s, which is the motivation my esteemed deputies seem to be employing.”

Neville listened, but his concentration must have been disturbed by the scene he was just witnessed.

“Focus now. What did I say?”

“Y… you have to it, you have to want it, Professor.”

“And?” Snape raised his voice in anger and struck the table. “And fear also works. Sir.”

“Very good. If you answer the next questions correctly, you will be exempt from another trip down memory lane. What does it take to cause irreversible damage with this curse?”

“Two wizards must cast it at the same time, Sir.”

“Very good. You have improved tremendously. And what are the symptoms of irreversible damage?”

“Their legs were swollen, Sir, and they screamed because of the feather.”

“The proper term is persistent swelling and increased sensitivity, Longbottom, but you are correct”. _Was your mother a healer or what? Stop it!_ “Bonus question: What made you dear parents finally lose their minds for good?”

“All four of them cruciated them at once, Sir, and they attempted to bash their heads in.”

“Precisely. Now leave. I will tell the Carrows you know everything you need to know.

Neville ran outside.

When Severus was quite sure that he was alone and that no one could be listening, he waved his wand and muttered: “20 points to Gryffindor.”


	37. Moaning Myrtle, Quiet Haze

**Trigger warning: "off-screen" rape. Apologize again for the dark content, hope the chapter is enjoyable anyway.  
**

If Severus Snape never met worse bullies than James Potter and Sirius Black, he soon learned it was only because he was never a Muggle-born student in a school that was ruled by Death Eaters.

Every day he was glad of his decision to keep the first year Muggle-borns out.

But it was not enough. Not close to enough. With one Carrow maligning the Muggles and their borns in Muggle studies and the other making a mockery of Defense Against the Dark Arts by teaching students to attack each other, these students’ school life soon became worse than it was ever was for him. In fact, they were making a mockery of the Dark Arts themselves - Snape always thought there were much more interesting things to do with Dark magic than punishing misbehaved students. There was nothing  _ artful _ about their teaching methods.

Thankfully, Longbottom took the message to heart in his private lesson on Cruciatus with Headmaster Snape, and he faced his punishment without fear, knowing it will take more than whatever the Carrows could do to him to send him to St. Mungo’s with permanent damage.

When Severus slept he dreamed of a woman without a face who embraced him and loved him, and he woke with a start as if from a nightmare. Every time, he said to himself, ‘ _ your mind is clearly going, Snivelly _ ’, and berated himself for dreaming of something so idiotic.

‘ _ But, since you’re awake, you might as well be useful’ _ , he thought, and he took to patrolling the corridors at night, hoping that that if he catches anyone himself before the Carrows or Filch did, he will be able to enforce the rules with a little less vicious glee.  _ ‘Yes, Severus Snape, the big slimy softy _ ’, he thought, with relentless self-deprecation, because after what he showed Longbottom, he now hated him even more than he hated the Carrows, and the teachers who once respected him could now hardly conceal their revulsion.

“I am not surprised that you hate me, Minerva,” he said to her once, with relish. “I have big shoes to fill.” She huffed and left the room. She must have thought Snape was being deliberately awful, and of course, she was right, but what could he say that could have made her feel better? “Your great Albus Dumbledore ordered me to kill him after putting on a cursed ring for no apparent reason?” She never would have believed that. Even Severus still had a hard time believing it, and he was there. He knew allowing them all to hate him was kinder, easier, although it felt neither kind nor easy. He knew sometimes only hate and spite keep you going, and he was not going to take that away from them.

On one of those sleepless nights, in November, Severus wandered the corridors like a bat, looking for a student to punish.

He heard something coming from the second floor bathroom - Moaning Myrtle’s bathroom. He dismissed it.

It didn’t stop. An image flashed into his mind, of Draco spurting blood, so much blood Severus almost slipped in the sticky red substance when he tried to get him to the hospital wing. He dismissed it. They didn’t call her Moaning Myrtle for being self-composed.

He tried to banish the image of Draco’s bloodless face, the memory of supporting him as he stumbled on the way to Madam Pomfrey’s. 

He found himself running to the bathroom. He walked in holding a stitch in his side.

What waited for him inside was almost as bad, and he did not know the spell for fixing it.

A third-year muggle born Ravenclaw, Lucy Haze, was on the floor. When she saw him walk in she tried to move toward the wall, her face the picture of terror. He did not dare to use legilimency on a student in this state.

“Get up.” He told her. She did not move. “Up!”, he barked. She turned her face to him silently and he did not need legilimency to sense emptiness behind her eyes.

There was no getting her up. “House elf! NOW!”, he shouted at the air, and Lucy froze. An elf appeared. “I order you to Apparate this student to the hospital wing. Wake Pomfrey up. Tell her to administer contraceptive potion and something for shock. NOW!”

Lucy and the elf were gone. 

Myrtle immediately resumed her wailing. “Who did this?” Severus asked her.

“Oh, like you care! Boys only come into my bathroom when they need something from me!”

The ghost certainly had her priorities straight. Severus was almost as white as a ghost himself. “Myrtle, answer the question.”

“He didn’t tell me his name! Nobody tells me anything!” She sobbed.

_ If only I could threaten to kill her _ .

Severus had to change tactics. “You know… Draco asks about you. If you help me, I can get him to visit you again.”

“You can? He really asked about me?”

“Of course he did! He is just shy.  _ Please  _ tell me what you saw.”

“It’s that handsome 5th year boy from Ravenclaw,” Myrtle said, her ghost eyes not glistening exactly, but more luminescent somehow, “with chocolate brown hair and blue eyes…”

“That’s enough, Myrtle.”

“I thought you wanted me to tell you. They’ve been here before, you know!” She sobbed. “But he never pays any attention to me! He only tells her I cry all the time anyway, so he is bringing her here so they don’t get caught, but she never even screams at all!”

_ Wit beyond measure, indeed. _

He was right. Severus asked to be named Headmaster to protect the students, and he too dismissed Myrtle’s screams.

“That will do, Ms. Warren. I do not need to know about your love…  _ afterlife _ ,” he said with his trademark half-smile, which he was able to conjure even though his mouth was full of cotton.

All hope of sleep was lost.

He returned to his office and opened the admissions book. Like he thought, only one Ravenclaw matched Myrtle’s description. Tarquin Crowley was a first-generation pureblood whose family was not associated with the Dark Lord or the Dark Arts in any way whatsoever. He seemed unhesitant to reap the benefits his status heaped upon him in the atmosphere Headmaster Snape and the Carrows fostered at the school. Snape did not know how, but Tarquin had to be punished.

The next morning, Snape experienced the nausea and the ability to neither focus nor to relax that he knew all too well, as the adrenaline left his body. He downed some dry bread as his stomach was rumbling from his nightly detour, but he knew nothing else will stay down.

Tarquin, of course, showed his smug face in the great hall, refreshed and happy, and no one could suspect that he spent the night outside his warm bed.

Every ounce of shame and self-loathing this boy should have been demonstrating seemed to have migrated to Severus Snape.

He swallowed his bread and drank some tea.

“Flitwick”, he hissed at the Head of Ravenclaw. “Your missing student is at the hospital wing. Madam Pomfrey will hopefully be able to fill you in. I also require your assistance in reforming the dueling club.”


	38. Flitwick's Rebellion

**A/N: I just want to thank everyone for reading and ask you all for comments. I really want to hear your thoughts about my story, and use your feedback to improve it! There isn’t a lot left, even though I am basically improvising this dueling club plot line just to squeeze more out of what’s left, but I want to know what you think of what happened so far - after all, I can always use your input when I rewrite. Thank you!**

 

The dueling club was reinstated as a mandatory activity for all students. Flitwick was incensed. He was a celebrated duelist, after all, and he insisted that he knew more about dueling than Snape and that it is not for everyone and that forcing students to participate is cruel. Snape yawned, which incensed Flitwick even more, and informed Flitwick that if he is looking for a more animated discussion, he is welcome to try to reason with Sir Cadogan’s portrait.

After all, what difference did it make what Flitwick thought? The dueling club was to  be discontinued after three meetings.

The first meeting focused on defense.

“Professor Flitwick, a former dueling champion, agreed to help me demonstrate some essential techniques,” Snape said to the crowd, already bored.

They demonstrated Expelliarmus, the Shield Charm, Impedimenta, and the leg-locker curse - all infinitely useful, and more importantly, all well within most third years’ abilities.

“Now, Professor Flitwick and I will choose students to practice the spells against us.”

He named three students at random. It was a dreadful waste of time, throwing lukewarm spells at students of varying degrees of talent. Lucy was fourth.

She was terrified of him. When he called her name, she walked toward the stage as if she had already been hit with Impedimenta. Her wand shook in her hand, and she had a frankly revolting look on her face, like a house elf about to be punished.

“Focus, Ms. Haze,” he ordered her.  _ Good. This is good. What use is teaching her to defend herself against someone she does not fear? _ “I am going to attempt to curse you and you will try to block me. On three. One. Two.”   
“Can I try with Professor Flitwick, Please?” She squeaked. “No. One. Two. Three. Petrificus Totalus!” He aimed the body bind curse at the floor near Lucy.

Alas, his dueling partner barely seemed to be paying attention. She only wanted it to end. He tried again, and again, but nothing made her even try.

Alecto Carrow cheered from the audience. “Look at that little Muggle,” She shouted, “Can’t even throw a Shield charm!” She left Snape no choice but to faintly express his approval of this view.

The first meeting of the dueling club was a resounding failure. Severus did not know what he expected Lucy to do, considering that she was released from the hospital wing mere days ago, and considering that when she saw him last, she was on the floor, attempting to become one with the wall as if she was in trouble. And now he advertised her helplessness to the entire school. He stationed an elf at Myrtle’s bathroom so that he could think and racked his brain for his next great plan when Flitwick and McGonagall asked to enter his office.

“What a nice surprise,” he welcomed them sweetly, like Umbridge might have done (if she ever got to set foot in this office).

“I told you dueling was not for everyone,” Flitwick squaked, while Minerva glared at him as if about to discipline a wayward student.

He had to get them out of there somehow.

“I am truly sorry if tonight’s events confirmed that Muggle borns are simply not like us,” he said, dismissively.

“How dare you! Target my students again, and I -” Flitwick shouted, but Minerva interrupted him: “I seem to recall,” she said, her temper rising by the second, “a certain Muggle-born student who was very capable of protecting YOU!” By the end of her sentence, she was shouting.

_ How dare she speak to me about her.  _ “That’s funny…” Snape retorted, making no attempt, for once, to control himself. “I only remember a Head of Gryffindor so obtuse, she allowed a gang of four rotten determined rule breakers run amok, cursing everyone in their path, while the staff turned a blind eye!” He hit the table. One of Dumbledore’s instruments clinked against the table. His eyes glinted with venom. “As for  _ you _ , Filius, if you want to get a rise out of me, then by all means give your precious student Ms. Haze private dueling lessons. All students must attend, and that is final.”

“I just might!” Flitwick let out with a tone of defiance. “And I just might help him!” McGonagall added.

“WHATEVER KEEPS YOU OUT OF MY OFFICE!” He growled, and his office ejected them.

This could not have gone better if he had planned it - indeed, it hasn’t. Severus was not done picking on Flitwick’s students just yet, and he very much looked forward to randomly picking Tarquin to demonstrate offense techniques.


	39. Pest Control

**A/N: I would call this chapter fan service if I thought I had any fans :) A little bit of wish fulfillment for me, anyway. Hope this satisfies you as well. As always - please leave comments! I love reading them!**

 

Severus scheduled the second meeting of the dueling club for December - after all, even he felt he was entitled to a Christmas present.

The students gathered. Lucy Haze was among them, fortunately, because the entire performance he was about to put on was meant for her benefit.

Flitwick demonstrated the attacking techniques on Severus with much more enthusiasm than he did the defense techniques.  _ Very good, Flitwick. Give me a reason to target Ravenclaws. You’re playing your part beautifully. _

Severus made sure to let Flitwick hit him with something, and then shoot a vindictive look at him before selecting Tarquin. As far as he was concerned, if everybody needed to believe this was some elaborate campaign against the Ravenclaw House, so be it. It was not his fault Tarquin chose to assault his own housemate.

He gestured at Tarquin to come up to the stage. “Here we have a pure blood student, Mr. Tarquin Crowley, and I have no doubt it my mind that he will demonstrate today’s lessons admirably.” Flitwick was positively fuming with fury - it was a funny sight, if Severus being was honest with himself.

Severus and his dueling partner bowed to one another. The duel had officially started.

“Go on and attack me, Mr. Crowley.”

“I thought you expected me to defend myself against you, Sir.”  _ Not quite _ , Severus thought.

“We covered defense last time,” he said silkily. “I ask that you attack me. Whenever you’re ready.”

_ Not so powerful now, are we? What is it, Tarquin, is it the live witnesses? Is it the fact that I’m not a 13 year old? Is it that I gave you my express permission that bothers you? _ Severus thought, his frustration growing. He had no reason to go easy on this student, he felt. “MOVE!”, he shouted at him, and Tarquin, startled, shouted some spell or another at him. Severus cast a shield charm, outright shouting “PROTEGO!” to make sure Lucy Haze heard the proper incantation.

“Again!” He ordered, and Tarquin made another pitiful attempt, just as Severus expected of a boy who, in his OWL year, chose to spend his time in Myrtle’s bathroom, abusing third year Muggle-borns.

The ludicrous display went on for 20 minutes, and Severus figured the audience learned everything they could from watching Tarquin fail to hex and jinx their headmaster.

“Enough,” he hissed.

“That was pathetic. I expected more of you, Mr. Crowley. Watch and learn.”

He first conjured a stone and threw it at Tarquin; it disappeared before it hit him but as he jumped out of its way, Severus made an oily substance materialize under him. Tarquin tripped, and next, Severus charmed the floor to become hot - searing. It burned the 5th year’s hand, and he quickly recoiled and shouted in pain (it was only much later that Severus remembered with disgust that he did not afford Lucy even the ability to scream). “Stop shouting like Moaning Myrtle, Mr. Crowley,” he hissed at him. Severus did not think himself so crude as to cast a Cruciatus at a student, but he had other tricks up his long sleeves.

He barked an order at Tarquin: “Stand up and attack me back!”

Finally, his dueling partner made an actual effort, shooting flames out of his wand and drawing near Severus. “Aguamenti,” Severus said, and extinguished the fire that singed his robe.

“Levicorpus!” Severus shouted, and Tarquin was shot upward, suspended in mid-air by his ankles, the ends of his hair pointing at the floor. The students were mortified. Severus glanced in Lucy’s direction - her face was inscrutable. She betrayed nothing. Severus had a feeling she will make a natural-born Occlumens one day.

Severus coughed. In the silent hall, this startled Tarquin, and he dropped his wand. Severus came near him, and looked into the blue eyes that were still hanging above him… Umbrage. Shock. Outrage. Betrayal.  _ If I read your mind correctly, you vile creature, you must be thinking pure-bloods were supposed to be protected from this kind of treatment. That they were supposed to be above the law. _

If Snape hated anything, and by Merlin, he did, it was pure-bloods who believed themselves to be above the law.

To the crowd’s horrified astonishment, Tarquin Crowley was transfigured into a cockroach and started flying in the great hall in an obvious panic.  _ Cockroaches also prefer to creep and crawl in the dark, unseen.  _

The teachers were appalled; Severus could not get away with much more without provoking another shouting match with them, no matter how much he wanted to conjure bug spray or a shoe and solve his pest problem for good.

He un-transfigured Tarquin, who was flying above the stage, and his human form crashed into the floor with a bang.

Severus spat. “I expected more from a student of your pedigree, Mr. Crowley. Consider this your punishment for making a fool out of me. Let this be a lesson to you all.”

He left.

The students and the staff were bound to realize at some point that the meeting was over.

The second and penultimate meeting of the dueling club was a smashing success - Christmas indeed came early this year. Severus was very happy with the gift he gave himself, but soon enough, another gift followed - Phineas Nigellus Black’s portrait finally told him where Harry Potter was.


	40. The Sorting Hat

It felt like it was many moons ago that Severus put the Sorting Hat on and pleaded with it to give him the Sword of Gryffindor. 

‘Well, this is a surprise,’ it told him. ‘I don’t normally find myself on the heads of full-grown wizards.’

If Severus ever felt ridiculous, it was at that moment, especially because he felt an actual grudge against the ragged old hat rear its head. The hat, apparently, sensed it, as it shifted atop his head, but chose not to address this. ‘How may I help you, Severus?’

‘I require the Sword of Gryffindor.’

‘If I am not mistaken, and I hardly ever am, I put you in Slytherin. Only a true Gryffindor can pull the sword out of me.’

‘Of course good old Godric Gryffindor would make such a self-serving hat. For your information, I intend to deliver the Sword to a Gryffindor. I have no use for the blasted thing. If I could deliver you to him, I would have, but it will give away too much.’

‘I sense that you are upset with me, Severus,’ the hat replied. ‘Care to tell me why?’

Perhaps it was the fact that he was wearing a hat that normally only graced the heads of 11 year-olds, but he felt very much like a petulant child.

‘Because you put her in Gryffindor! You had to put her in the same stupid house as Potter and Black and the whole lot of them, and she….’ he did not finish his sentence in his mind. If the hat wanted to know, the hat was welcome to ask.

‘I stand by it. She was a Gryffindor if there ever was one, Severus, and you know it. Courageous, chivalrous, outspoken. She would not have done well in Slytherin.’

‘I guess that makes me a coward, then,’ Severus thought, knowing full well he was being petty in the extreme, ‘not to mention that I wouldn’t call being murdered at 21 doing well, exactly.’

‘A coward, you are not. But you were and still are a quintessential Slytherin, a very easy student to sort, you were. And it seems to me that you did very well for yourself, indeed - are you not Headmaster? Are you not the Dark Lord’s second in command?’

‘I never wanted any of this and you know it.’

‘You can’t lie to the Sorting Hat, Severus. All I say is what I see in your head.’

He sulked under the Hat. It was true - there was a time in his life when he would have given everything to be the Dark Lord’s second in command; the only difference  _ now  _ was that he had already given him everything.

‘It was not so long ago that I sorted her son.’

Severus sulked some more.

‘I know you despise him, I know you see only his father in him.’

‘Wonderful, another sermon about the Amazing Harry Potter. Spare me. I have Dumbledore’s portrait for that.’

‘I wish I could show you he has a lot of his mother in him. He, too, is courageous, chivalrous, and outspoken. But you should know, I almost sorted him into your house.’

Severus almost choked. ‘Excuse me?’

‘He begged me not to. I later realized it was Tom Riddle’s fragmented soul I was responding to - yes, I heard Dumbledore tell you about it - but it is not necessarily the only reason. He has been cunning. He has been resourceful.’

‘Cunningly nearly getting himself killed every other week.’

‘Even so, I take it that it is him to whom you will be delivering the Sword.’

‘Precisely.’

‘I recognize that if I do not help you get it to him, I might have no one left to Sort next year. I can do it, for the benefit of Hogwarts. But the enchantment requires that you demonstrate extreme valor.’

Severus raised his Sword-less hands. ‘So I am a coward, then. And yet you Sorted Pettigrew into Gryffindor. How about the fact that I lie to the Dark Lord constantly, risking torture and death? How about the flagrant betrayal of him,  _ before _ he fell? How about the fact that I have not killed myself yet?’

‘That will do, Severus.’

The Sword fell into his hand. 

 

As he extracted it from behind Dumbledore’s portrait, Severus remembered his excruciating conversation with the Sorting Hat - he was glad it did not turn out to be a complete wasted effort to get the Hat to cough it up to him.

‘Headmaster! They are camping in the Forest of Dean! The Mudblood -’

‘Do not use that word!’ Severus admonished the portrait.

‘- the Granger girl, then, mentioned the place as she opened her  bag and I heard her!’

Dumbledore saw fit to remind him of the conditions under which the Sword must be taken - as if he could forget.  _ That _ he did tell Severus, but tell him what in Godric’s name Harry needed the Sword for - Heaven forbid. The portrait also found it important to warn that must not let himself be seen “after George Weasley’s mishap”. It was good, Severus reckoned, that he already knew he must not be seen.  _ George Weasley’s ear? I killed you and you think it is George Weasley’s ear they will be concerned about? _ But then again, Severus thought, what could he expected of a wizard who got himself cursed in this ridiculous manner in the first place? “Don’t worry,” he said coolly. “I have a plan.”

The school was positively deserted - almost nobody stayed for Christmas this year. Only those who had absolutely no place else to call home remained, and thankfully, Rubeus Hagrid was one of them. Severus made his way to Hagrid’s hut. He did not bother with pleasantries.

“I require a thestral, Rubeus.”

“I will never help yeh, not fer me own life,” the Groundskeeper spat at him.

“Your life? Your life, Hagrid? You are not important enough to kill. Fetch me a thestral, or else, Hagrid.”

“Or else what, ye cunning, murdering…”

It was not exactly a question, but Headmaster Snape dignified it with an answer nevertheless. “Or else I will fire you and hire your old friend and Death Eater Macnair to teach Care of Magical Creatures. In a manner of speaking.”

Hagrid had no choice but to obey, muttering “‘course, he can see the thestrals, the student torturing, death eating traitor” to himself all the while. Hagrid seemed disgusted with himself, but for a change, Severus was not. This was the best Christmas break he has had in a long time.

Of course he could see the thestrals - he was no stranger to grief. He mounted one of the skeletal, winged horses and the useful creature brought him to the Forest of Dean.

He dismounted the thestral and immediately ordered it to fly away. Apparating back to Hogsmeade will be no problem, and there was no reason to draw more attention to himself than he absolutely had to. 

This was a very happy Christmas indeed, because he was given another chance to torment Potter - since Potter had to demonstrate his  _ courage  _ to get the Sword, no amount of pain seemed excessive.

He found a pond that had already frozen over. He cracked the thick layer of ice and threw the Sword in the water - and froze the pond again.

The rest of the operation depended on Harry - and that thought made Severus shudder more than the shivering cold did.


	41. The Snapes' Last Christmas

**A/N: For context, you’re welcome to read Chapter 4 of this story, “Eileen”, so that it’s easier to remember the events referred to in this Chapter]**

[Hogwarts, December, before the Christmas break, Severus’s 5th year]

“Why do I hear rumors that you’re going to stay here over Christmas?” Lily asked Severus in mock-outrage.

“That depends, Lil. Is Potter leaving for Christmas?” He answered her, earnestly. “Of course he is,” she told him.

“Then I am staying. I’ll finally get some actual work done in this place.”

“Oh, don’t be like that, Sev!” Lily pleaded with him. “Who wants to be at school over Christmas break? It’s time to be with family!”

 _Good one,_ Severus thought to himself. “You haven’t been to Christmas at our house, though, have you?”

Lily looked down. “I know. I’m sorry. I didn’t mean it like that. I meant… Come home for me!”

It was one of the very few times refusing those eyes was easy.

“Why don’t you stay here?” He asked his friend.

“No way. My parents will kill me. And I miss the little Muggle town! Come on!”

Maybe she had something to miss over there; he did not. The only place worse than school was home, and with James gone, school wouldn't be that bad.

“Drop it, Lily, I’m not spending another Christmas with Tobias asking why I didn’t bring him anything from that good for nothing wanker wizarding town when he doesn’t send me any money. You have fun though.”

She looked hurt.

“So that’s it? You’re leaving me alone with _Petunia_?” It was not a welcoming prospect at all.

“What about all your Muggle friends?” He asked her bitterly - “Why don’t you spend your break with them?”

 _That’s great_ , Lily thought to herself. He was just trying to make her beg him to come and she knew it.

“Well, I can’t tell them about magic, for one. Two, my parents told everyone I’m going to some posh private boarding school, and we don’t learn any Muggle subjects here and all my friends will expect me to be clever and I will feel like an idiot. Three, they’ll all want to talk about movies and records and I haven’t seen a movie or heard a record in ages. Don’t you miss it at all? The movies?”

 _She doesn’t get it, does she?_ “Hey Tobias, can I get some money to go to the movies with my freak witch friend please? How do you expect this to work out, Lil?” She forgot, sometimes, how awful he was. _Good for her_ , Severus thought. Then she suggested he use magic, as if he was stupid to not have thought of it before.

“ _You_ can try Summoning his wallet, the last time I tried that I was limping for a week.”

Lily started to look exasperated, or maybe Severus imagined it. “Then I’ll get my mum to buy you tickets. Come on, is this what this is about? Money? Because we can study at my house, you know, mum and dad will be pleased.”

Severus did not need her charity.

“Just ask Potter to spend Christmas with you. He’ll fly his stupid _Nimbus 1000_ across the entire United Kingdom for you twice, I reckon.”

_Why does he have to tease me about James? It’s not my fault he fancies me. It’s not like I like his stupid stunts._

“Maybe Malfoy will give you a couple of Sickles, if you don’t tell him it’s so that you can go to the movies with a big Mudblood!”

_Why are we fighting? She is the one who came to me!_

“I don’t think you’re a _mudblood_ , Lily, stop it,” he told her. Besides, Lucius had been busy. The last time Lucius wrote him was weeks ago, and even that letter was really short. He had been learning fascinating magic, though, so who could blame him? Much more useful than the rubbish they were teaching him at Hogwarts. There was magic out there he could really use, and he could not wait to use all of it on Tobias… on the quote-unquote marauders…

Lily noticed he was no longer in the same conversation as her. “A knut for your thoughts?”

“Nothing, honest.”

“So you’ll come?” She asked him. “Please? Pretty please? We don’t have to go to the movies. We don’t have to do anything. I just want you home with me” - she looked at him with a devilish spark in her eyes and almost sung: “and it will drive Petunia crazy.”

“I’ll think about it.”

“Yes!” Lily exclaimed, and kissed him on the cheek. “I knew I could count on you!”

She ran off to join a group of giggling girls. Shocked, Severus remained where he was and touched his hot cheek. Currents were running all through his body.

Now he _had_ to go. _You’re good, Evans_ , he thought.

 *****

Christmas 

[Spinner’s End, Christmas Eve, Severus’s fifth year]

Of course Tobias did not let Severus go to the Evanses’  for Christmas dinner. It's been like that every year - a Christmas dinner with no decorations, with no guests, with his mother looking especially miserable (of course, this year he knew why). Every year, it was only the three Snapes sitting there while Tobias angrily barked at them to look happy. Not that he ever looked happy - he looked drunk. And mean.

“My own son wants to spend Christmas Eve with the redhead freak uptown and my own wife can’t be cheerful on this holy day to save her life.” _Great, Tobias has something to say. He never shuts up._

“You know, they invited us. All of us. Even you. It was very nice of them, and it was very rude of us not to come,” Severus said. He knew his cheek would cost him, but he didn’t care.

“Rude, am I? They only invited us to show off their posh house, again, you idiot.” _Just because they are not dirt poor does not make them Posh_ , Severus thought. His bastard father did not even know what posh was. But Severus did - he’d been to the Malfoy Manor, after all. “They invited us because Lily is my friend, Tobias!” Severus shouted - better go down for the dragon than for the egg.

“I am your father, Severus, your only father, and I certainly don’t want to spend Christmas with another abomination!” He waved his knife and fork ominously. “You and your useless mother are bad enough without that little pest running around my house, eating my food, stealing my belt. Don’t think I didn’t know about that, you wanker.”

Now he made Severus angry - well, angrier. “You don’t know anything, Tobias, she is a witch, not a common Muggle thief, she Vanished it!”

Tobias saw weakness, and he pounced. He was good, even when he was drunk.

An understanding smile spread across his revolting face. He looked like he just got his Christmas present. “She is too pretty for you, you know. She will outgrow you. I’ll bet the house she won’t know who you are by this time next year. She’ll vanish your knob before she comes near it. Attractive girls like her don’t go for gormless, ugly gits like you.”

Right where it hurts. He was that transparent, was he? And who was Tobias to call anyone else ugly? _I hate you so much, Tobias._

“Do you ever shut up, Tobias? Or will you actually drop dead if you don’t shout at us? Can you not be a perfect arsehole for once in your life?” They were nearly hook nose to hook nose, and there was nothing in either of their pairs of black eyes but hatred.

Tobias started undoing his new belt.

“Dinner is over,” he said with one of his special heinous smiles he saved just for his family, and as far as Severus was concerned, dinner could not end soon enough. Eileen hid her face behind her hands. “Don’t, Toby, please, I beg you. Let’s just eat,” she said. But since when did asking nicely for something get you anywhere in this house?

Severus was getting too big to kick around, but Eileen was getting smaller every year, if anything. He managed to run away with minimal damage, but his mother did not. She never even tried.

Moments later, Severus was in his mildewy room, listening to a symphony of plates breaking, Tobias shouting profanities, and the belt cracking.

 _Not one of your best ideas, Lily_ , he thought miserably, wondering if she was thinking about him at all.

He stayed awake, because he knew what was about to happen. Tobias would fall asleep and then him and and his mother would finally have a moment of peace together. Since he was home, he figured he might as well ask her a few questions.

Sure enough, she quietly made her way to her son’s room as soon as Tobias started to snore.

“He’s a right bastard, you know that, right?” He asked her, as soon as she came in.

“You shouldn’t provoke him, Sevy.” She struggled to make her way to his bed and sat with a wince. “I can’t help it, Mum. How can you let him treat you like that?”

“Never mind that now, love. Help your mum. You remember the healing spells you used last year, don’t you?” Severus nodded. “My clever boy. You’re a natural, you know.”

“Hmmm,” Severus grunted as he focused on performing the healing spells on his mother. He watched the swelling go down and the bruises melt away. There was a limit to what he could do with charms alone. If only he had some dittany or murtlap on him… _Then you should have thought of that before you let Lily drag you into this miserable vacation._

Then his mother said, “All better. I’m glad you came home, Severus.”

“I ought to have fought him off you.”

“Don’t. I am glad you didn’t. I’m proud of you. It hurts me more when he does it to you, you know that.”

She got up with effort; the bastard must have got her in places she didn’t want to let her son see.

“Are you going to go to a Muggle hospital, at least?”

“I don’t think so, no. I don’t like hospitals. I’ll be fine.”

He knew, he just knew, she was hiding something from him, and he’s had it.

“Mum, I know why  you can’t do magic.” If she had any color left in her face, she would have lost it there and then. “How?” She asked him, mortified.

“They have old Prophets at Hogwarts, you know.” She gulped. She remembered how the Prophet had told the story, and it was not good - ‘St. Mungo’s experimentalist Eileen Prince kills entire family on Christmas’, she believed, was the exact subtle wording they'd used.

“I’m sorry.” She said, choked up. “I should have told you sooner, Sevy, I’m sorry.”

There was only one thing Severus wanted to know. Well, two.

“If you did this, they deserved it. It’s just… how much worse can they be than _him._ ” His head jerked in the direction of the snoring. “And why won’t you kill him, mum, I mean it.”

Her eyes were wet. Severus hadn’t seen her cry in years.

“They did not deserve it. They were wonderful. It was all my fault, Sevy. I didn’t mean it.” She drew a labored breath and wiped her eyes dry.

“Have you learned about Felix Felicis yet?” She asked him. Their official curriculum did not cover it yet, but that didn’t mean he didn’t know exactly what it was.

When she was done with her tale, her son understood everything.

*****

Sitting in the Headmaster’s office, Professor Severus Snape figured since it was almost Christmas, after all, he might as well use a Christmas memory to produce his Patronus. In his mind, he carefully made sure to avoid stepping on the landmines of memory that could extinguish even the strongest Patronus, and focused on Lily’s singing voice saying “it will drive Petunia crazy” and how she kissed him on the cheek, and he sent the doe patronus to lead her son to the Sword.


	42. The Prince Family Curse

Harry Potter has been the bane of Severus Snape’s existence and the sole reason for the continuation thereof since the day he was named “the Boy who Lived”. But when he sent Harry his Patronus to guide him to the Sword of Gryffindor, for the first time, the boy - now a man - followed Severus’s instructions perfectly, understood him immediately, and performed admirably.

Through the doe’s silver eyes, Severus saw Harry follow him, straight to the icy pond, with none of the arrogance, insolence, or total lack of sound judgement he normally exhibited. Severus always knew the doe was Lily, but for the first time in his life, it occurred to him that does not only mate with stags - they also give birth to them.

He was her son. He really was.

Only by allowing Harry to see Severus’s true nature, could Severus finally see Harry’s, and with a cascade of small epiphanies, Severus realized that the boy who looked so much like his father was indeed, in his deeper nature, much more like his mother; that when Severus inadvertently taught him through the pages of his old Potions book, he was suddenly as good as his mother was.

He froze. In a manner of seconds, the sudden rush of affection turned to fear. The warm sensation that spread through him turned cold, as the extent of the danger Harry was in dawned on him.

Eileen. Lily. Lord Voldemort. Albus Dumbledore. As far as Severus could remember, he loved very few people, and all of them died, some by his very own hand. The only one who managed to come back from the dead was the one he now despised.

Albus sat in the very seat Severus now sat in once, and told him that the boy must die. Except… Severus realized he ignored something in his shock… he had to make sure.

He poured the memory into the Pensieve.

Yes. Dumbledore’s eyes were indeed firmly shut.

Was he trying to hold back tears or was he occluding?

Severus poked his wand violently into Albus’s portrait’s eye.

“WAKE UP!”, he barked at him.

Ever the well-tempered old man, even in death, Albus said: “How may I help you, Severus?”

“Your eyes were closed.”

“Indeed. I was sleeping.”

 _Is there anything more infuriating than having your panic and rage met with Albus’s even-mannered little observations, as if he is speaking to a particularly stupid child?!_ Severus wondered.

He exploded. “Not NOW, in the name of your corpse, Albus. When you told me Harry must die. Your eyes were closed.”

“Ah, yes.”

 _If I could kill him again…_ “Well?!”

“Well what, my dear Severus?”

_My dear Severus. My dear Severus, he calls me. Is the portrait being deliberately daft?_

“What are you hiding, Dumbledore? I am tired of your lies.”

The portrait sighed. “Does Harry have the Sword?”

“Yes.” Severus said. _I can answer a simple question, unlike some of us._

“Does he know who gave it to him?”

“Of course not.”

“Excellent.”

Severus fought the urge to throw something at the portrait, or to simply take it off the wall and smash it over his knee. He inhaled and exhaled. Once. Twice. Three times. It didn’t help.

“Your eyes, Dumbledore. WERE YOU OCCLUDING OR WEREN’T YOU?”

“I was,” the portrait finally admitted. “I believe Harry will be able to return, as you know. I had a tool at my disposal, that I believe might make it so, of which Lord Voldemort is not aware. He must remain in the dark. I cannot say more.”

“How do you know he does not already know about it?” Severus asked.

“I have irrefutable proof. I always trusted you. Now you must trust me.”

Severus felt absurd as he caught himself attempting to legilimens the portrait.

“I am truly sorry, Severus. I know it is difficult. But that knowledge is safer outside your head. I know you can understand that.” For a brief second, less than a second, Severus saw an image of himself crying and pointing his wand at his neck, under his chin… as soon as it came, it was gone, and Severus felt hollow and confused.

“Very well,” he said, but it was not well. Albus also said, back then, after he opened his eyes, that Harry will need strength of character and _luck_. Severus had to concede that perhaps Harry's characters left less to be desired than he thought before, and in any case, there was nothing he could do about his character or its strength from where he was sitting. He realized with a shudder, however, that he could arrange for luck.

 _Sorry, mum_ , he thought to himself - but it was not like he was going to use the potion on himself.

He reached for his most comprehensive potions book. To his astonishment, his bookmark was already on the page he was looking for - the recipe for Felix Felicis was staring at him, right there between “Feline Health Potion, General” and “Fertility Potion”. _Well, isn't that fortunate_ , he thought, and allowed himself to chuckle.

As the school always had a supply of Ashwinder eggs, Severus figured he will be able to brew some in less than six months - it could be ready in four months. _What’s four more months. I can make it four more months._ As he said so to himself, he wondered why he could not remember looking up any potion that starts with F since he moved his books to his office.


	43. The Light in the Fog

The Christmas break was over. Headmaster Snape had to go back to work, loath as he was to do so. But, true to her name, Lucy Haze was like a light in the fog to him, because he still had something to look forward to: The Third and Final Meeting of the Dueling Club.

To Flitwick’s chagrin and visible agitation, he scheduled the meeting to the first week of January. The agenda: Give Tarquin Crowley a chance to prove himself against a student, and make sure he loses, badly, even if that meant Severus had to Confund him himself.

_Fair play is for Hufflepuffs._

After the pureblood’s defeat, which was to be as humiliating as it was guaranteed if Severus had anything to do with it - he planned on throwing a temper tantrum and canceling the Dueling Club.

The students gathered, again. They all looked like they would rather be sorting Flobberworms or cleaning the Trophy Room with a toothbrush with Filch breathing down their necks. Severus could not blame them - after what he did to Tarquin, he knew he looked like even more of a student-hating, favorites-playing dictator than ever before. Well, the student-hating, favorites-playing dictator was not done just yet.

“I believe our Mr. Crowley deserves a chance to prove himself against a fellow student. It was neither wise nor fair of me to expect him to defend himself against an older and more experienced wizard such as myself. I admit I let my inflated expectations get the best of me, but I have every faith that he will perform very well today. Mr. Crowley, come on up.”

The cockroach made his way to the stage.

“Do we have another volunteer?”

Everybody made like Lucy did when Severus saw her in Myrtle’s bathroom and tried to disappear - except Lucy herself. “I volunteer,” she said. Severus was shocked. Lucy looked in Flitwick’s and McGonagall’s direction - they gave her encouraging nods. “A Ravenclaw will win tonight whether you like it or not, Snape!” Filius gloated, and Amycus Carrow raised his fist at the tiny teacher like the brave, noble man he was. Severus gestured at him to relax.

Lucy walked up to the stage and climbed it, hesitated for a moment, then no more. Whether it was Tarquin’s previous experience on this stage or Lucy’s sudden confidence, he was visibly shaken. This was working out perfectly.

Both of them refused to perform the customary bow, opting instead for the shortest, most perfunctory downward jerk of their head. Tarquin was disarmed as soon as he looked back up, and non-verbally at that. She was still the girl who never made a sound, but now her silence was power. She has clearly been receiving lessons from Flitwick and McGonagall.

“Give it back, you cheating bitch,” he cried. “How did you do it? Somebody is helping her!” Lucy handed him his wand, with clear restraint - he grabbed her wrist and attempted to twist her arm behind her back… “This is a wizard’s duel, Crowley, not a Muggle wrestling match. 5 points from Ravenclaw.”

He released her. “Step away from one another and try again.”

Next, she ducked his body bind, hit him with Stupefy, and managed to cast a fairly advanced charm that put Tarquin to sleep right there on the spot. Filius and Minerva always have been effective teachers - Severus had to give them that.

To his astonishment, Lucy did not need his help with the roach at all, and she was smart enough not to go too hard on him in front of witnesses. It was just as well, because the Carrows were beginning to look scandalized.

“The little Muggle is cheating!” they shouted.

“Enough!” Severus made a point of lightly kicking Tarquin’s sleeping face as he walked.

“The duel is over,” he announced, hoping he sounded angry. “Ms. Haze, has anyone been helping you?”

“N… no, Sir.” _Not that you know of._

“Alecto, Amycus, you accuse this student of cheating - who do you think has been helping her?”

“Oh, I don’t know, Flitwick and McGonagall have been cheering for her pretty hard, Snape! Give her detention!”

Severus walked up to the accused teachers and snatched their wands. As he expected, Priori Incantatem yielded nothing, and he returned the wands to their rightful owners. He hoped he looked angry, because he was, in actual fact, extremely pleased.

“Just give her detention,” Amycus practically begged him, and Severus could her the pang of hunger in his voice - “we will get it out of her.” Now Lucy finally looked scared. “I didn’t cheat,” she piped in. “I practiced.” The private lessons were clearly meant to be a secret, judging by Flitwick’s sudden interest in the ceiling.

“What on earth for, Amycus?” Severus said, sweetly. “She will clearly be able to shield herself against our misbehaved students’ feeble attempts at Cruciatus. You will serve detention with Filch, Ms. Haze.” The time has come to put an end to the sham. “And you have showed off for the last time. Dueling Club is canceled. Somebody wake up Mr. Crowley.” He prayed the injustice of it all - even he never detained a student for succeeding before - will conceal the fact that while the “Dueling Club” was an abject failure, the “Punishing the Rapist and Teaching the Victim to Protect Herself Club” was an unmitigated success. He took every chance he had to step on Tarqin’s hand as he meted out Lucy’s punishment.

Lucy walked out of the room looking somehow both elated and confused. The light was shining brighter than before. _Even if the Dark Lord wins and this has all been in vain, I did that_ , Severus thought. All in all, he still believed his life has been a mistake - but he did that.

**[A/N - If anybody has been wondering, Tarquin is named after the perpetrator of the Rape of Lucretia (look it up if you want). I also like that it starts with a T, like the other villains in the story, Tom and Tobias. Lucretia is a weird name for a Muggle-born so I shortened it to Lucy (which means “light” and is also the female version of the name Lucius), and “Haze” is the last name of the titular character in Lolita. So her name ended up being Lucy Haze, or “light in the fog.” I just had to show off. My apologies.]**


	44. Call Me Severus

Days turned into weeks, weeks turned into months, and life at Hogwarts settled into a routine - a dreadful routine, but a routine all the same. Students broke the rules, students got caught, and students were punished. The more legitimate teachers stopped giving out detentions altogether but the Carrows assigned them liberally for every real and perceived infraction, and Headmaster Snape did as well - what choice did he have? Madam Pomfrey was working herself to the bone with the Carrows’ and Filch’s victims. The student body diminished in size every week, as Muggle borns escaped and as parents brought their children home for funerals and St. Mungo’s visits… or simply because life at Hogwarts had become unbearable.

Every morning, Severus woke up (if he had been sleeping at all), bleary-eyed, and washed his face. If it wasn’t for his hair, he might as well have been looking at Tobias in the mirror - Sirius was right, he looked exactly like his old Boggart. _I am never getting a haircut._

The house elves already knew he expected a nearly bottomless pot of coffee at his desk every morning.

 _Don’t think of Harry Potter_ , he told himself in those moments of the morning before the Daily Prophet came, before the owls bearing the Death Eaters’ news fluttered in. Where was Harry now? He was alive - that much was certain. But not much else was. _Don’t think of Harry Potter._

Every morning, he opened the Death Eaters’ letters - they usually told him which students will be attending a funeral soon. He spread the Daily Prophet on his desk and read the fresh batch of lies about Dumbledore and Harry, and half-truths about murders and kidnappings he already knew about. He has long known the Prophet was best used as bedding for owl cages.

Every morning, he remembered with a groan that he had to be Evil Headmaster Snape for yet another day.

One such day, before he even finished reading the Prophet, Filch knocked.

How did a student manage to break the rules before Filch finished his morning round?!

“I found a student in the second floor bathroom, Headmaster.” _At night_. Somebody was breaking the rules at night. _Not again_ , Severus prayed, _I cannot get away with another stunt like the Dueling Club again…_

He turned the handle as slowly as he could, praying for _something_ , not knowing what for. When the door opened - fast, much too fast - he saw his prayers, vague as they were, were answered - lying on his back on the floor, as still as a sprayed bug, was Tarquin Crowley. 

“What have we here? A student out of bed so early? You must have been lying here, Petrified, all night!” Severus said, holding down a smile that threatened to make its way to his face. It had to be Lucy, protecting herself or perhaps some other unsuspecting Muggle-born.

He released Tarquin and ordered him to come to his office after dinner. “Justice will be served, Mr. Crowley, rest assured. If you are feeling well enough, go eat.”

The vile creature scrambled out of the bathroom. Next was Filch’s disappointed face to get rid of. “Oh, can you not see that he is the victim here? _If_ he is guilty, he will be punished to the fullest extent, Argus. You have my word. Off you go.” Filch shuffled away. _No way are you getting to have all the fun with this one,  Argus.  
_

Severus was shocked that he still had energy left for sadism, but soon decided it is only sadism if you enjoyed it, and he was going to enjoy it very much.

Seven o’clock came. Severus made no attempt to investigate the incident. He made an entry in the students register and waited. He heard a knock. “Come in,” he said. He wrapped his hand around Tarquin as he led him into the office and very politely pulled a chair back and gestured him to have a seat.

“Would you like anything to eat or drink, Tarquin?” he offered.

“No thank you, Sir.”

“Please,” Severus insisted. “Call me Severus. First and foremost, I must apologize again for my conduct in the Dueling Club.”

“Errr… that’s alright, Sir.”

“Severus. Now, to the business at hand.”

“I know who did it, Sir, sorry, Severus.”

Enjoying the play on words, Severus said: “Please, enlighten me.”

“It’s that little slag Lucy Haze, who else could it be?”

_Shocking._

“Why would you think that?” Severus asked, hoping he sounded genuinely concerned and not like someone who was about to be sick. “Did you arrange to meet her there? Did she attack you there without provocation? Did she petrify you somewhere else and drag you to the girls’ bathroom by herself?” _Do you feel the noose tightening around your neck, you sick bastard?_

Tarquin replied: “No, Sir. She attacked me in the bathroom.”

“How many times must I insist that you call me Severus? Let us ignore the fact that you were in the girls’ bathroom after curfew at all, Mr. Crowley. Be honest with me. Why do you believe she attacked you?”

Severus could not wait to see what reason the idiot sitting in front of him will come up with.

“She must have been jealous, if you ask me.”

Severus could barely contain his surprise - he did not see that one coming. “Jealous?!” he asked, his nostrils flaring, his eyebrows almost in the ceiling. “Jealous of what, pray tell?!”

Tarquin weighed his options and eventually, chose to inform Severus that “we used to snog.” Bile threatened to burn a hole in Severus’s throat. He swallowed.

“Snog, you say. And you say she was jealous. Does that mean you were… snogging someone else?”

_Don’t say yes, don’t say yes. Please don’t say yes._

“I was trying to!” Tarquin proclaimed. _Praise Merlin._ “I told you, that slag wouldn’t let me.”

With his fist on his chest, Severus asked: “Why do you think she was jealous?”

“She must have realized I am the best she could do, you know, being Muggle-born and all.” _Even Lily did better than you._

Severus’s charade was working. The smug bastard swallowed his friendly and concerned act like someone who either never encountered friendliness and concern before or someone who encountered nothing but - and Severus strongly suspected Tarquin of being the latter.

It was time to really open up to his new friend. “I understand you, Tarquin. I used to have feelings for a Muggle-born once, myself.”

“I don’t have feelings for her,” Tarquin protested. “It was only a bit of fun.”

_Fun._

“Even so, I must warn you that having feelings for, or indeed, a bit of fun with, people who do not feel the same toward you can dramatically alter the course of one’s life. This would be your O.W.L year, correct?”

“Yes, Si… Severus.”

“I must also warn you that life is not kind for the witches and wizards who are denied use of their wand,” Severus said solemnly.

“What does it have to do with me? Expel Lucy, I don’t care.”

_Do you feel it? Does your neck begin to itch with it, perhaps?_

“It has everything to do with you. You have not sat your O.W.L.s yet. I know everything that happened with Ms. Haze, Tarquin. Why do you think I insisted that you call me Severus?”

“Because you feel bad about Dueling Club? You said it yourself.”

_Wit beyond measure? Zero. There, I measured it._

“My only regret is that I did not conjure a shoe and hit you with it. No. No, Tarquin. I insisted that you call me by my first name because as of 7 o’clock today, I am no longer your headmaster. You have been expelled. _Expelliarmus!_ ” Severus cried before any of what he just said could sink in.

Tarquin was on the train to London the following morning. The Hogwarts Express driver must have been having his busiest year yet, as was Severus. "Care to tell me where my missing student is this time, Severus?" Flitwick asked him, making no attempt at all to cover up his anger. "I expelled him," Severus replied, equally angry, "because he was a filthy ra... venclaw, and I advise that you keep a closer eye on your students if you want to have any left."

...Every evening, Severus checked how his potion was doing, finding solace in the simmering cauldron. He found that when he was focusing on his potion, he could truly be relaxed. Every evening, he hoped and prayed that his master will continue to chase down a wand Severus suspected did not exist - whatever kept both their minds off Harry Potter.

 

**[A/N: Please comment, I beg you. I really hope I handled the Lucy story with care. Dying to know what you think of it, and in general.]**


	45. October 31, 1981

The potion was ready. Spring came again. As was always the case for Severus, that did not mean a wardrobe change - he wore long sleeves as a child to hide the bruises, and he wore them as an adult to hide the Dark Mark.

It was pointless. Everybody knew of the evil that was burned into his very skin. He knew he was, in actual fact, hiding it from himself, because he did not want to see, did not want to face it every time he did anything with his left hand.

That too, however, was pointless, for these days, the Dark Mark was going off all the time, burning and pulsating with various messages the Dark Lord had for his faithful servants.

He did not want to think about the Dark Mark because it reminded him, of all things, of Lily, of his guilt, of the fact that she was gone from his life and then from the world, of the fact that it was he who caused it, of the fact that he was alive and she was not.

It has been 16 years, 6 months, and one day. 

October 31, 1981, was the day the wizarding world was set free from Lord Voldemort. Shooting starts, owls in the day time, celebrations… Lily Potter was almost forgotten in the midst of it all, a footnote in history’s pages, even though it was she who defeated the Dark Lord.

Only the Death Eaters grieved on that day, and the days that followed, and Severus Snape was among them - but he grieved for her.

“I thought… you were going… to keep… her… safe,” he said to Dumbledore in the office he was now occupying, barely breathing, ready to depart from the world.

He had nothing left to live for - and he did not deserve to. He was not going to stay alive in Azkaban with the Dementors (how she used to fear them!) forcing him to relive the moment he was living now.

But Dumbledore had a better punishment in mind for him - something rather more useful.

She died for her baby. She gave him her eyes and then she gave him her life, putting herself between him and the Dark Lord, like she did so many times, for the unworthy friend who unwittingly betrayed her.

Severus Snape’s punishment was to live. Live and atone for the life he ended by forsaking any desire he might have had and doing what Lily would have done, had she lived. No love. No children of his own. He will substitute love with grudge and pettiness, and he will live like Lily died, between Harry and the Dark Lord.

Where Lily protected her son with love, he protected with hate - but he protected him all the same. When the Dark Mark appeared on his hand again, even the most faithful Death Eaters stopped grieving. Severus never did. But he pretended. He wore the Death Eaters' Mark, and he wore the Death Eater mask that was so persuasive, nobody saw him for anything else. Not even the Dark Lord.

Grudge was a poor substitute for love, and he was a poor substitute for Lily, but he was the only one alive who knew her, who really knew her, and who could thus do what she would have done. She made herself ugly by getting herself hit with jinxes that were meant for Severus, and he made himself ugly as well, in his perpetually long sleeves, the Malfoys’ apparent lap dog, the Dark Lord’s faithful servant… of course, he never had much beauty to spare to begin with.

The Dark Mark burned on his skin - into his flesh - reminding him that she was dead, that he was not, that he did not yet fulfill the terms of his punishment, that he was not done protecting the son of the woman he loved. The woman he killed.

Lord Voldemort sounded unnaturally calm as he informed him, through the Mark, that Harry was on his way to the Castle.

What would Lily do?

Before he could think of what he was doing, he swallowed the golden potion. He had one last task to complete before he could join her. Harry Potter must deliver himself to the Dark Lord willingly, sacrifice himself like his mother did, so that he might have a chance to return. Felix Felicis might have killed every last Prince, but Severus Snape has been ready for 16 years, six months, and one day.


	46. Forgotten But Not Gone

[The night after Dumbledore’s murder, Severus’s and Arabella’s last meeting] 

Severus begged her: “This is the last time you see me. Please, please, let me do something for you. Anything. Please.”

Finally, she said it: “There is one thing.”

“Name it.”

 _That’s the general idea,_ she thought. Arabella Figg felt vulnerable. Not because Severus was apparently a Dark Wizard and a murderer, but for a reason much more mundane. Since they first met, he needed her - her brand of compassion, of observation, and eventually, of friendship and love.

She hated needing things from wizards, but now, as she had served her purpose in his life and he was about to leave her for good, she needed something only he could give her.

“I want a child.” she said.

“Could you repeat that?” he asked sardonically. “I swear I thought I heard you say you want a child.”

Was he being difficult on purpose or truly incredulous?

“Your hearing is fine.”

After a few false starts, he settled on retorting with “maybe Albus Dumbledore could have conjured a child for you out of thin air, Arabella, but unfortunately, I killed him earlier today.”

When did he become daft? “I want _your_ child,” she emphasized. Not only was this statement true, it had the added bonus of shutting Severus up.

His stunned reaction stopped being amusing after about thirty seconds, though, because she really did need an answer. After he stopped muttering nonsense to himself, he settled on legilimency. He never used it on her before - there was never a need to - but she knew what he was doing and she opened her eyes comically and defiantly wide.

“Mine? My child? Why on earth, Arabella, would you-”

“Because I have enjoyed your company, and you possess traits I would like to pass on to a child,” she interrupted. People have had children for less compelling reasons before, she felt.

“You want a traitor and a murderer for a child? Or for the father of your child?” Perhaps it was too much to expect of Severus to stop being dramatic mere hours after he killed Dumbledore.

“I want a bright, brave, loving man, who was compassionate enough to give an old man a kind death, for the father. Yes.”

“It won’t know its father,” he said. 

“You knew yours and it never did you any favors.” _Come on Severus, you know I have a point there._

“The entire world hates me, remember?” That was true, but all Squibs who lived among the Muggles knew how to keep a secret.

“If this is still the case, it won’t know who the father is. I can protect it. I promise you.”

He took a deep, pained breath… protection. _That sounds nice_ , he thought.

“I am cursed. You know that.” _Oh, not that nonsense again, Severus, wizards and their curses._ If he was reading her mind as she thought it, she did not care.

“Your mother was addicted and she paid dearly. You made choices that cost Lily’s life. _Choices_ , Severus. And this is my choice. You asked me what I wanted.”

“I can’t. I can’t be responsible for her life and let her come to harm. Don’t ask that of me.” _He said her._

Arabella had one last argument up her sleeve, but she knew she already won. He said “her”, he already agreed. He just did not know it yet.

“I am not magic,” she reminded him. _Yes, and I am not a cornish pixie. What is her point?_ He thought.

“So?” he asked, rather more politely.

“So your so-called curse works on magic. Eileen was magic and she did what she did with magic. Magic killed Lily. But I have been safe, I am just fine, because I’m _not_ magic. Don’t you see? The curse won’t work.”

He thought, and thought, and thought some more. He knew there was no curse. It was only a very compelling lie he told himself, one of the many lies he had to tell himself to survive his life. He knew he could not pray for a better mother for any child than the woman standing before him. He knew he owed her, and he wanted her to be happy and have everything she wanted. And yet…

He looked at her as if _he_ was a child. Wide-eyed, embarrassed, ashamed. She had seen his heart and she chose to ask him for a child. _Him._

“I will love her. Whatever she is. Magic, or otherwise. She will be safe. It won’t be like it was for you. You have my word.”

He could not bear the thought of another helpless creature to be responsible for… “I know you will probably die,” Arabella continued. “I can do it on my own. She will be my responsibility.”

She did not say “you owe me”, but both of them thought it.

“I’ll do it,” he finally said. “I will brew fertility potion for you. The… _special_ ingredient will come from me. I promise.”

They shared a tearful embrace and he left her house for the last time.

She received her friend’s final message and the potion he promised her a couple of weeks later.

*****

Now, it was spring. Arabella’s next door neighbors, the Dursleys, have been away for some time now. The wizarding world was burning and the Muggle world had its fair share of casualties as well. Arabella held her hand to her belly and wondered if she made a mistake.

Nobody could answer her that. The father was beyond her reach. The Muggle doctors were astounded that a woman her age presented with a very healthy pregnancy, but she was not surprised at all. The father’s potion was extremely powerful. “It’s a girl, like you wanted,” she wrote, and put the note in her box, but of course, everything she put in that box in the past, oh, about nine months or so ( _like you don’t know exactly how many months it has been_ , she said to herself) stayed right there.


	47. The Shrieking Shack

Severus waited for the Felix Felicis to speak to him, for something to change, but nothing of the sort happened. The only change was that his left hand felt like it was on fire. It was spasming with pain.

_Harry Potter is here and the Dark Lord is coming. Whatever happens, soon you will be free._

Severus left the Headmaster’s office for the last time. _If you succeed, you finally kill yourself. If you fail, you finally kill yourself faster. That is all._ Briefly, Severus wondered how other people calm themselves down.

Yet his left hand burned, his heart was pounding, every passing shadow spelled doom, every sound startled him - his viscera shut down, knowing the danger. In other words, he was scared. It was so unfair, to fear, hours before the end, to fear like he feared his father as a child, like he feared the foursome who made a target out of him as a teen... the fear that drove him to the Dark Lord to seek shelter, to seek power, not knowing that he was exchanging his only protector, his only true friend, for the illusion of safety.  Why could he not be a foolish Gryffindor just this once? They always rushed headlong into heroics, feeling none of the shameful weakness Severus was feeling. There is nothing more undignified, he felt, than having a soul that wants to die in a body clutching for its worthless life.

 _Just let me get the message to Harry. Just let him come back_. He prayed frantically to the potion that was now coarsing through his veins, and the stone doors closed behind him.

He saw Minerva - Potter’s head of house - and thought she might know, but she sensed his hidden presence behind the suit of armor. “Who’s there?” she asked. She always had good instincts. _Please believe me…_ he begged silently. “It is I”, he said in a low voice, stepping out. _I cannot hide anymore. So close to the end._ “Where are the Carrows?” he asked. _Don’t let them find him first…_

“Wherever you told them to be, I expect, Severus.” Minerva McGonagall never did get over her demotion from Deputy Headmistress. _He is near. But where?_ “I was under the impression that Alecto apprehended an intruder,” Severus interrogated. “Really? And what gave you that impression?” Minerva said, paying in kind. Severus moved his (screaming, agonizing) left arm very slightly. _Please, Minerva, do you not see that I am ashamed of it, do you not realize that I always covered it, do you not feel that it is burning me?_

The pain grew as he allowed his mind to focus on his arm. _I will kill myself by Sectumsempra-ing it off,_ he resolved, and with an effort, pulled his attention away from it.

“Oh, but naturally, you Death Eaters have your own private means of communication, I forgot.” She was never going to believe him. Even Felix Felicis couldn’t do that. _While I am still Headmaster_ , he thought, and made a feeble attempt to pull rank. But of course, petty things like rules were always beneath the House of Gryffindor.

Minerva attacked him. He defended without attacking. Soon, the other heads of house entered the scene. No one got hurt. The potion was working. “No! You’ll do no more murder at Hogwarts!” Flitwick shouted as he attacked him.

 _He should have been less concerned with me, and more concerned with the misadventures his own students embarked upon,_ Severus thought, but even he was running out of time in which to be petty.

He was not good enough to duel all Heads of House at once, nor did he want to. They all openly defined him now. No one was going to help him find Harry Potter. He took flight, chased only by Minerva’s shouts of “Coward! COWARD!”

Somehow, he managed to fly, like Lily did, that day on the swings…

 _If I cannot get to Harry, I must get to the Dark Lord,_ he thought, and allowed his master and his Death Eaters into the castle. There was no choice, really. 

The battle commenced, and it was terrible, but Severus was immune. Until his master called for him, through Lucius. Lucius, who first drew him to the Dark Lord all those years ago. Lucius, who fell so far from grace... And like he did then, Severus followed Lucius to Lord Voldemort, to the Shrieking Shack, where he was almost murdered by Sirius Black’s hand, where he once attempted to save Potter and his friends from a werewolf and a killer in another failed attempt at heroism… To enter the Shrieking Shack again was to push his _luck,_ to put it mildly, but he trusted his skills as a potioneer. As he entered, he thought not of Lucius, but of Lucy, who returned to the bathroom where she was used and left for dead, to protect another… his light in the fog guided him - _if she could do it, so can I… as long as he permits me to go find Potter, and until then, I must fear for my joke of a life…_ As he crawled down the entrance to the scene of near fatal prank, he could not help but notice that the place still terrified him… but he moved his body and soon, he felt nothing at all.

He came to his master. Like Dumbledore predicted, the snake was placed under magical protection. It was now more urgent than ever. _I must find him_. All fear was gone, Occluded. There was nothing in the world but Harry Potter. He begged his master to let him continue his one-man search party to no avail.

“I have a problem, Severus,” his master said in the softest voice. _Oh No._

“My Lord?” Severus asked him. _Supplication. Supplication will buy you time._

“Why doesn’t it work for me, Severus?” _You feel nothing. You are nothing. This is not happening. Listen to him go on about the wand, agree with everything, it doesn’t matter._

“I have thought long and hard, Severus… do you know why I have called you back from the battle?” _He is on to me. He knows. How long has he known? But no. It can’t be. I am yet alive. He is trying to_ teach _me something. Just like old times._

“No, my Lord, but I beg you will let me return. Let me find Potter.” Severus spent so much of his life on his knees, begging… Was it any wonder he was consumed with spite the rest of the time? But nothing he begged for ever happened. Lily was not spared, and Harry was about to die not knowing what he had to know… _Why, WHY did I take this potion?_

“But it is of you that I wish to speak, Severus. Not Harry Potter. You have been very valuable to me. Very valuable.” _Oh no. He is being kind. He is going to do something awful to me._

“My Lord knows I seek only to serve him. But — let me go and find the boy, my Lord. Let me bring him to you. I know I can —” he was met with another refusal. Again, his master was speaking of wands, theorizing on why the wands failed to kill Harry Potter. _Because of Lily, of course - don’t think of her -_ “I cannot answer that, my Lord,” Severus replied, knowing full well he was the only one who could. Whatever the Dark Lord had to say about wands made no difference. Severus focused on the snake. Then something pierced the thick veil of occluded thoughts… “I sought a third wand, Severus. the Elder Wand, the Wand of Destiny, the Deathstick. I took it from its previous master. I took it from the grave of Albus Dumbledore.”

_Oh._

The thought - _it will be over soon_ \- drove all other from Severus’s mind.

“My Lord - let me go to the boy…” _I will not face her again if I fail. I must find him… I must buy time…_

“All this long night when I am on the brink of victory, I have sat here,” the Dark Lord said, in his usual conversational volume that was so low his followers always had to make every effort to listen… “wondering, wondering, why the Elder Wand refuses to be what it ought to be, refuses to perform as legend says it must perform for its rightful owner. . . and I think I have the answer.” _Say nothing. This is not happening._ But it was. 

“Perhaps you already know it? You are a clever man, after all, Severus. You have been a good and faithful servant, and I regret what must happen.”

 _No. Not now. Not now. Please not now…_ “My Lord—”

The Dark Lord made a hissing sound, and the snake attacked.

 _I failed. The potion failed. It’s over._ Severus could not keep from screaming as the smooth, sharp fangs easily made their way through his flesh, screaming like a child… His strength left him, death was coming. “I regret it,” his master, the master he ended up serving until the very end, informed him. Immediately, he was gone. Severus put his fingers to his punctured throat in a futile gesture, out of base survival instinct.

Then… James?! _Am I in hell already? No… it’s Harry!_ Harry Potter came to him, and like his father before him, begrudgingly saved him in the Shrieking Shack - but of course, it was his soul, not the abject body - he let go of his neck to draw him closer - the potion worked - it worked so well, Hermione Granger was there too, and she conjured a perfectly-sized flask, and Harry understood him for the second time in his life, and he took the memories, and the regret, and Severus fulfilled the terms of his punishment.

As his past and his future leaked out of him, there was only the present, the briefest moment, and Severus pleaded with the emerald eyes, “look… at… me….”, and his last plea was answered, and he met her eyes with love.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I'm not crying, you're crying.


	48. Greatness and Sacrifice

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I was inspired to add a chapter from Voldemort's POV! It goes after the Chapter where Snape dies, so don't get confused by the order! I also rewrote many of the chapters and I find them much more compelling now, if anyone is interested! Thank you!

Tom Riddle always knew he was different. _Better._ He was smarter, more handsome than everybody else. He was more well-spoken than any adult even as a child, and he moved with a casual elegance, a grace that belied his station. These things, everyone could see, but he alone knew of his other powers, the powers to control and hurt others without touching them, the ability to speak with snakes. He was special, he was one of a kind. Yet, he was born and raised in captivity, in a trap: an orphanage where he could not flourish, where they tried to make him like the others. Outside his orphanage, there were others, who had parents, a heritage, everything he lacked. In lonely nights (and all of them were lonely), he felt the lack, the void. He stared into the abyss and it scared him and fascinated him at the same time.

Death was tangible to him. Everything he lacked - that was death. Death took his mother, denied him an identity, and marked his life from the moment it began. Others might have failed to understand death - Tom Riddle did not. It was an enemy, and Tom Riddle knew it prudent to keep one’s friends close and one’s enemies closer. He had no friends. He would make death a friend.

He did not know how he would do that - whenever he was not occupied with something else, there it was, the void, and he knew that one day it will swallow him. The thought was insufferable - for him to die? So bright, so bold, yet buried alive in an orphanage, trapped in lonely anonymity… until a man came and changed everything. That man was like Tom Riddle - he had powers like his, and he knew what Tom was - Albus Dumbledore told Tom Riddle he was a wizard, and pulled him out of the cesspool of mediocrity and the indistinguishable masses of flesh that oppressed him with rules and false ideas. At 11, Tom Riddle already knew - the only thing real is power, and magic is  power.

Tom Marvolo Riddle (he used his middle name much more often now, that it was not as strange) learned that wizards come in three varieties: pureblood, half-blood, and Muggle-borns. He also learned that they are all sorted into houses. He had been denied his heritage long ago, and did not know how pure his blood was, but he was sorted like everyone else. The very existence of the Sorting Hat told him another truth: People do not change. They have immutable qualities, however much the Hat and everyone at the school tried to deny it and dress it up in comforting illusions. Slytherins sought _greatness_ , and nothing else mattered to Tom Marvolo Riddle. The mind-reading hat scared him, at first: Could a simple object know who he was? Will it see the void that terrified him so? He was thankful that it needed barely to touch him to cry out the predictable verdict: Slytherin!

Soon, Tom Marvolo Riddle found out that he was a Slytherin in blood, as well as in nature. A story uncovered itself before him, the story of his noble ancestor, Salazar, who left his majestic beast at the school to purge it of the filth, the threat, when none of the other three had the good sense to to accept that admitting the Muggle-borns into Hogwarts was to introduce a threat to the very fabric of their society… that the Muggle-borns, like the Squibs, by their existence, violated the natural order and had to be eliminated, certainly not admitted to the school and treated as equals. His family’s story devolved into a story of degeneration and ostracism, and Tom Marvolo Riddle swore to rewrite it and to reclaim what was his from the very beginning.

Unprecedented achievement requires unprecedented sacrifice. This has been the case since the beginning of time, and it would be until the end of time. Tom Marvolo Riddle planned to witness the end of time. At 16, he killed, and made death not his friend, but his servant, his tool. He encased a bit of his soul in his diary, and he knew that death could not defy him. The first sacrifice on the path to true immortality was a small one - mere mudblood Myrtle Warren. Only Dumbledore could be enough of a sentimental sap to believe that the integrity of one’s soul was of any import. Tom thought this was a ridiculous idea that the masses lauded to suppress greatness. Myrtle’s “sacrifice” paid off - it gave him not only power over death, but proof that he was the Heir, and he would use this proof to bring his plans to fruition.

He sacrificed his father and uncle, and with each stroke, he felt his powers grow. None other than Tom Riddle could long for a family for years only to destroy it on sight as soon as they found it. 

Slughorn was shocked at Tom’s “academic” inquiry about Horcruxes - but he was only slightly less of a fool than Dumbledore. Slughorn’s role in life was to observe greatness, bask in its light, at most. Tom Riddle was destined to shine like the sun.

He became Lord Voldemort. With each sacrifice, he was surer of his path. People started following him - members of the purest and most powerful families were enthralled to him. The richest and most honorable sought his favor, and eventually, he won. He held the world in his hand, well on his way to complete domination. The name he was assigned at birth was forgotten, even the name he carved out for himself was feared. Only one bastion of resistance remained - Hogwarts. Albus Dumbledore seemed to protect it with his person, denied him even a simple teaching post. But Lord Voldemort left a piece of himself there, and made sure Albus Dumbledore will never forget his mistake - if he could not have the Defense post, no one could. In the grand scheme of things (and the grand scheme of things was the only one) - it mattered not. Dumbledore did not take the measures Lord Voldemort took. One day, he will die. Lord Voldemort could wait.

The follower Lord Voldemort sent to spy on Dumbledore was impressive - considering his age, his bloodline, his very shallow pockets. That was not saying much. He was easily manipulated, tempted by the mere promise of protection and power, so desperate for approval and comfort that a few well-placed compliments, a kind word, a pat on the shoulder, could make him do almost anything. Watching him begging to be Marked, quite literally writhing on the floor, was extremely amusing - it only took Lord Voldemort pretending to be hesitant about marking Severus Snape for Severus Snape to be overcome with longing. He longed to be included, longed to earn his place, and Lord Voldemort sent him to spy on Dumbledore almost as a joke. If he could not get a teaching post “because of his age,” how could his pitiful errand boy? Yet Severus Snape returned to him victorious. A post? No. He got something much better. A prophecy. _The one with the power to vanquish the Dark Lord approaches...._ So he was not born yet? It was not Dumbledore? Of course. So simple. Lord Voldemort realized he had been a fool to wait for Dumbledore to die - he was scared of the past, but the future could beget unspeakable danger! Of course Lord Voldemort could not know, could not guess: He has only been alive for a few short decades, he did not have the insight that could be gained in centuries, millennia. He worried about Dumbledore, who was a mere mortal, but fate itself intervened and sent him word of the future.

He had to start thinking like an immortal. The immortal do not concern themselves with the appearances of goodness, of an evenly-matched fight. The soul of the immortal does not need saving, for it is not in danger. He will find out who the baby is, and slay it in its crib.

Lucius swallowed his distaste for this idea. Surely, the man famous for his prowess at Muggle-torture could not be this soft? This sentimentality had to be because his own wife was expecting. He wisely expressed no concern. The others took their cue from him, as did the messenger, who was so elated to have given his master the prophecy, he could hardly contain his anticipation for it to come true. In perfect accordance with the prophecy, Harry Potter was born. Harry Potter was to die before he had a chance to say his first word.

Severus Snape had ideas above his station about who the child was. He believed it was Neville Longbottom. Why would a pureblood want to defeat the Dark Lord? After Lord Voldemort’s imminent victory, he planned to make the Longbottoms a symbol of his benevolence and forgiveness, proof that to accept his reign was beneficial to all. But Severus deserved to be rewarded, his sudden fixation on Neville Longbottom notwithstanding, and Lord Voldemort promised him his prize - the green-eyed mudblood who eluded him for so long, so long ago. He would enjoy her, than do away with her, like she did to him.

The immortal, Lord Voldemort quickly learned, need not concern themselves with punishment and reward. The stupid girl would not step aside, and Lord Voldemort thought Severus could do with a concubine who had more zeal, more zest for life, than this one. He tried to make her move for two minutes, but eternity beckoned, and he removed the obstacle from his path.

His soul was ripped from him in a wave of pain that was, by definition, known to none before him, since for anyone else, to hurt like this was to perish. A darkness, not from the absence of light, but from the lack of eyes, a silence from the lack of ears, and the pain… Lord Voldemort knew that Muggles could feel pain in missing limbs, and that it drove many of them to suicide. Phantom pain. Lord Voldemort was all phantom - his entire body had been amputated. He had made his first real sacrifice - Tom Riddle’s healthy, handsome body was no more.

The void he feared for all of his life nearly consumed him. _How? How could I have failed?_ Where a body in pain could find respite in unconsciousness, Lord Voldemort was a phantom, literally disembodied, and if he stopped thinking, he was sure to be extinguished forever. He forced himself to persist, sometimes thinking only: _I am. I am. I am._

Vision, hearing, touch, smell, and taste were gone. He had but one sense left: If anything near him was alive, he sensed it, and possessed it, until it was drained of its life force. His life was darkness and horror punctuated by the indignity of possessing insects and vermin.

He somehow made it to the forest where he found the Lost Diadem, and possessed the tree that used to conceal it. Trees had a life force that could sustain him for longer than small animals did, and this tree has been the hiding spot of a powerful magical object for centuries. It could protect him. In his tree, he thought, incessantly: _How? How could I have failed? Was it the child? Did Severus know?_

Most of his followers abandoned him. Only four searched for him, and paid the price. He spent 13 years without a body, while his servants were free. _All of them will pay.  
_

After 13 years, he was finally reborn. His duplicitous Death Eaters answered the call at once. Oh, to wield a wand again, to move his own muscles, to walk upright - to be loved, worshipped, and feared by his followers… his rightful place was restored, at the center of a circle of powerful wizards, who all remembered their exact spot, and who fell to their knees one by one to kiss the hem of his robe…

Then, Potter escaped him again - again, protected by the dead - _where has my mother been, instead of protecting me, then?!_ \- and Lord Voldemort banished everyone who witnessed this defeat, all but Wormtail and his newly-crafted arm. Two of Lord Voldemort’s predictions failed that night: Harry Potter escaped him, and Severus Snape returned to him. People never change. Even after 13 years in Dumbledore’s pocket, Severus still seemed the eager, loveless wretch who would do anything and suffer any indignity for a place beside Lord Voldemort.

Had Dumbledore really been foolish enough to believe him remorseful? Reformed? He was either a traitor from the very beginning, or a narural-born servant. The fact that he came back and suffered the just punishment Lord Voldemort meted out, offered to die right there and then, told Lord Voldemort everything. He did not allow himself to become complacent, however. He tested Severus again and again. Severus went to ridiculous lengths to secure the second half of the prophecy, even cast an unforgivable on Dumbledore, but to no avail. No matter. According to Severus’s irrefutable account, the boy was wholly unremarkable, protected only by a dead witch’s love and Dumbledore. Lord Voldemort decided: He will wait until the boy turns 17. Before that happens, he will use his “repentant” and “reformed” servant to kill Dumbledore. A servant remains a servant, and a fool remains a fool. If Severus Snape had been reformed even in the slightest, Albus Dumbledore would have lived.

The path fate paved for Severus Snape was clear: He delivered the prophecy, he unwittingly caused its conditions to come true, and he removed the last obstacle toward its eventual, inevitable conclusion. He even provided the correct date of the boy’s departure from the safety of his home.

Severus Snape was rewarded - he was Dumbledore’s successor, for almost one year, as he had asked. But he had outlived his usefulness, and Lord Voldemort summoned him to the Shrieking Shack. _Had he not said himself that he would die to serve me? He begged to bring the boy to me, still so desperate to be useful, to set himself apart… but the boy is nearby, I can feel it. It is time to sacrifice the faithful servant._

He did not use the Killing Curse. The wand had not aligned itself with him, and he knew of the dangers of using it to excess, better than anyone. Severus Snape was not granted a painless death, sadly, but Lord Voldemort knew: Harry Potter will die soon, like the unworthy opponent he has always been.

Predictably, the boy who lived presented himself to Lord Voldemort, and he died an unceremonious death - almost the small errand this should have been in the first place. Victory was his. The void receded. All the sacrifice paid off - the body that could not feel the Cruciatus Curse was surely dead, as dead as his parents, as dead as all of Lord Voldemort’s victims, as dead as Dumbledore, who foolishly trusted Snape, as dead as Snape himself, who offered to die on the night of Lord Voldemort’s rebirth, and finally made good on his word… the last bastion of resistance had to surrender. Their hero and only hope was gone. Harry Potter lay at Lord Voldemort's feet before them.

The Longbottoms were always meant to be a symbol. By sparing them, Lord Voldemort planned, initially, to advertise to the world that he was merciful, that the worthy could live under his eternal reign. It was not to be. The aurors became a symbol of his Death Eaters’ cruelty, and their son seemed adamant to carry on their legacy. Not everybody could defy their parents’ legacy like Lord Voldemort had, after all. Neville Longbottom was not spared a second time. He was petrified under the Sorting Hat, at the same time frozen and burning, and then… uncontrollable chaos emerged. When Harry Potter emerged from his invisibility cloak, alive, Nagini was slayed, even Bellatrix was dead...there was nothing more to sacrifice, only rewards to reap.

Was Dumbledore’s great plan really hinged on Severus Snape and his _love_? Surely, even he was not such a fool, to believe in love to such a degree. Love could not even keep Merope Gaunt alive, could not even keep Tom Riddle Sr. interested in his son… _Dumbledore thought the abject, deplorable boy who begged to be marked as mine while still in Dumbledore’s own school could love another enough to betray me, and not just any other, but the mudblood who married his enemy, whom he still despised? Dumbledore believed that he loved her so, yet returned to me, her killer, knelt before me, accepted his punishment without protest, without reaching for his wand, all for her son, whom he despised, whom she bore to the man who took from him what little dignity he had? No. He loved only me, and the last words out of his servile mouth were ‘my Lord’._

It was time to put an end to the farce and kill Harry Potter for the last time. He raised the Elder Wand and cast his last _Avada Kedavra_ , and in a flash of green light, the void swallowed and consumed him, and he was no more.


	49. Alone On the Hill, Or: The Longest Last

The war ended months ago. Harry Potter still had nightmares. He often woke up at the Burrow, in his and Ron’s room, and it often took him a couple of moments to remember where he was.  _ I am alive. Voldemort is gone. I am alive, he is gone. _ He repeated this to himself like a mantra.  _ The burrow. You are at the burrow. Ron is here. And Molly. The burrow. You are at the burrow. _ Harry never really thought about what his life after the final battle will be like, but he never imagined he will be sharing a room with Ron, still. But it comforted him, how some things remained the same. He had to hang on to every bit of comfort - if not for himself, then for his adoptive family. After Fred, they were all going through the motions, and the celebrations did very little to cheer them up.

Considering that the school year was already under way and most of the kids already graduated, the house was much fuller than it should have been, but it felt so big and empty without Fred. Harry, Ron, Percy, and George now lived there - George moved to Bill’s old room, and no one batted an eye - but still, it felt abandoned. Arthur asked Harry and Ron not to leave. “Molly needs you here,” he told them. They shrugged. Neither of them had anywhere else to go, really.

On top of putting the Weasley family back together again, there was the rest of the wizarding world to think about. Their work was cut out for them. Harry attended every funeral - all these people did die for him, after all, according to Voldemort, but said nothing, and he absolutely refused to give the Daily Prophet the time of day.

He was exhausted. The amount of attention he was getting would have sated Gilderoy Lockheart, he would have bet 1,000 Galleons on it.

Lockheart… thinking of his second year Defense teacher made Harry smile. How naive he has been, how little he knew… It was more than Lockheart knew, in his present state, but so little, still… He remembered the ridiculous “dueling club”, where Snape demonstrated what was to become his final spell in the final battle…

Snape… who defended him and also went out of his way to needle and torment him… who, with his last breath, finally told Harry his mother’s story.

He knew what he had to do. He had to go back to Hogwarts. He resolved to do something that will disappoint Dumbledore. He owled Headmistress McGonagall to tell her he will be coming the following day. The following day came, and he apparated to Hogsmeade.

It has been a while since he has been out of the Burrow, but he was not comfortable exploring just yet. A drink at the Three Broomsticks meant inevitable questions. He went to the Hog’s Head. He drank in silence. Aberforth was kind enough to leave him be. It was a shame that the entrance through Ariana’s portrait was barricaded. He took the long way.

Eventually, he made it. He had no desire to face the task he took upon himself alone, so he went to the Great Hall to wait for Hermione - not Ginny,  _ Ginny will not bear it... _

Since he first set foot in the wizarding world, he was famous, but now the nature of his fame was completely different. It was like the opposite of an invisibility cloak then, but now, paradoxically, he could do whatever he wanted in plain sight and nobody dared to question him. Incredibly, he now sought the one teacher who always,  _ always, _ did. 

Before he could fetch Hermione, a 4th year Ravenclaw ran to him. “You’re Harry Potter!” she said. He confirmed. “Is it true that you said Professor Snape was always on your side?” she asked. That he did. “How do you know?” she wondered. He sighed, because he really did not want to answer questions, and explained: “We won against all odds. I am alive. It was all down to him in the end. Information he passed on to me.” The student seemed lost in thought. Finally, she told him - “last year, I… I had a problem, and Flitwick and McGonagall reckon Snape must have helped me with it… that he did it on purpose, I mean. I don’t know how he knew. I could never understand why he never expelled me, all year. I’m sure he knew. But I don’t have any proof.”

“What’s your name?” he asked her. Her name was Lucy. “I can’t offer you proof, Lucy, but if he made a point of appearing to be a complete bastard throughout, he was probably on your side.”

Her smile told him he indeed made a point of it, and Harry wondered how many more stories like that will come out in the future.

Finally, he was able to extract Hermione from the Great Hall. “What are we doing?” she asked him.   
“We are going to find the Resurrection Stone.”   
Hermione was shocked. “Are you mad? What for?”   
“Snape.”   
_ He must be mad, _ she thought. But Harry was not mad, though he knew he must look it - never in all his life did he think he will one day wander the Forbidden Forest looking for Snape as opposed to hiding from him, running away from him. They walked, and walked, and walked some more. “Um, Harry?” Hermione interrupted the silence.   
“What?”   
“Can’t you Summon it? It is yours, you know.” It was getting old, how she always had to be the clever one - but it worked. The stone zoomed into his hand, and he turned it.

*****

When Severus Snape died, his eyes were open, so naturally, his eyes were open when he came to at the top of a desolate hill. It seemed familiar, but it took him a while to recognize it - after all, the last time he was there, it was in the middle of a stormy night, and he was in a mental state that left no room for knowing where he was. It was the site of his first meeting with Dumbledore.

He surveyed his surroundings. It was not, all in all, unpleasant. It was dewy, a little chilly, but the wind was gentle and the silence soothing. He was able to conjure some robes, and by force of habit, he put them on without looking at his hands.

Quiet. Dim light. Solitude. It was wonderful. He remembered his first meeting with Dumbledore there - the man’s disgusted face, the utter and complete shock, and the word “anything”. Dumbledore asked - what will you give me in return - and Severus said he will give anything.

Waiting for Harry Potter to die so that he could meet him and tell him that he had a choice to come back - not a choice - a duty, as far as Severus was concerned, fell under the definition of “anything”. So he waited. It was the easiest and most pleasant part of his task thus far.  For the first time in 16 years, six months, and two days, he had time to think clearly.  _ If you call being a faithful death eater thinking clearly _ . He realized, for example, that the prophecy was made not to Dumbledore, but to him - it was too big a coincidence that it just emitted out of Trelawney when he was spying. There was also the nagging sensation that he had unfinished business among the living - business unrelated to Harry Potter, or even to Lily. The constant blanks that would have driven him mad that last year, if he could afford to go mad, the memories that ended abruptly despite having no conclusion, the bookmark on the correct page… even the fact that he was able to face Lord Voldemort and resist him, that he never succumbed to the powerful pull of his former master… after all, it would have been so easy… it was all connected. He knew it. But nothing was coming to him by way of clues.

So he waited, and thought, and conjured all manner of books, and waited, and thought, and read. Then, all of a sudden, he was bathed in bright light.

After his eyes adjusted to the light, he saw Harry Potter and Hermione Granger. “Errr, Professor,” Harry greeted him. He was always eloquent, wasn’t he.   
“While I appreciate the sentiment, it amuses me that you chose to address me properly of your own volition for the first time only now, that I am no longer your professor,” Severus replied. Unlike people, old habits die hard.   
“I just wanted to say… sorry that you had to…”  _ Die? Is he going to say ‘die’? Odd thing to bring up now, isn’t it? Aren’t all three of us dead? _ _   
_ Severus rubbed his neck where the snake bit him. “Oh, that? Just a scratch. It healed in no time, as surely even you can tell.”

Hermione put her hand over her mouth and pointed. “What?” Harry asked her. “Look!” she exclaimed. “Don’t you see? It’s gone!”  _ What is the know-it-all talking about now? _ Harry went pale.  _ This is becoming annoying. _ “Well?” Severus asked them, finally. “Your hand, Prof… uh, Snape!” Harry said. “The Mark. It’s gone!”

Evidently, when Severus lifted his hand to his neck, his sleeve rolled down, revealing the smooth, unblemished left arm of an innocent man. Severus surveyed it, shocked. “Your body still had it,” Harry said, solemnly. Apologetically? “They buried you in Godric’s Hollow,” he notified him, with downcast eyes.  _ Near her. _

The thought of Lily reminded him of his one-item agenda. “Harry, you can go back. Hermione, I don’t know about you, I’m so sorry, but you, you can go back. You must.” The ever so familiar expression of ignorant confusion appeared on Harry’s face. “Back where?” he asked him.  _ Back where. Unbelievable. Where could it be? _ “To life! To life, Potter!”   
“But… I am alive.”  _ What fresh hell is this, then? Did Dumbledore have another brilliant plan for the afterlife? _

Severus demanded: “Explain.” Harry sighed.   
“I died and I came back. Voldemort is dead. It’s over.”   
“How?”   
“Dumbledore. He explained it to me. It was my mother’s blood. And the Resurrection Stone, I think. It showed me the way back.”  _ The what stone? _ _   
_ “The resurrection stone, Potter? Are you quite sure of that?” he asked his former student.   
“Yes! Don’t you remember? The cursed ring that killed Dumbledore? It can bring people back. He didn’t tell you? That’s how I brought you back.”  __ So that’s what he was hiding. So he didn’t kill himself for no reason after all. Severus realized: Harry was finally safe from Lord Voldemort forever.

“Lily,” he said, without thinking. “Lily, Lily, Lily, Lily! I loved her, I loved her so much, my only friend, and he went after her, and I sent him after her, and I loved her more than I hated you, more than I hated your father, more than I loved him, I never… and she…” the guarded words broke free, and they were like a festering wound that was finally being drained… Harry turned the stone again, and Lily stood before him.

She was as whole and perfect as she was when she lived, and Severus began to sputter, to stammer. In all their young lives, Harry and Hermione never saw him lost for words. But Lily threw her arms around him - both of them were equally solid - and Severus began to sob. “I know,” she said. “Dumbledore told me everything.” They parted, eventually. Too soon. But there was an eternity ahead of them. “I missed you, Sev.” Severus was surprised to learn that the dead can get choked up.

Severus no longer had eyes for Harry. He looked at Lily, looked at her, not in the flesh, but as close as could be… “How could you forgive me?” he asked her. “The only one I could forgive for what you did is the one who saved my son. And I… I should have forgiven you then. When… you know. I should have come to her funeral.” Even Severus forgot about his mother’s so-called funeral years ago. It was the only grudge he did not keep.

There were no tears left to cry. “I miss you too, Harry… my son… both of us - all of us - we are so proud of you, we love you so much. But I don’t want to see you again for a very long time.”

“Sev. Come with me.” Lily reached out to him, holding out her hand. He almost joined her, at last, at the longest last. But more words issued out of his throat before he could think. He remembered. Everything. “Potter! The stone. Give this to Arabella Figg. I.. She… Please.” The surprise on Harry’s face told Severus Harry understood him. Harry was never one not to investigate a mystery. He would know what to do. Severus took Lily’s hand.


	50. The Half-Blood Princess

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> The last chapter, not including future re-writes :) I hope it pleases you all and thank you for reading. I enjoyed writing this a great deal!

The mystery was indeed too enticing to ignore, and so, Harry’s first unlikely quest set him off on the second.  
_First Snape, now Privet Drive. Maybe next week I’ll go visit Umbridge,_ Harry thought to himself. The Dursleys’ garden was well on its way toward recovering from their nearly year-long absence, but it was not what it was used to be. Harry wondered if they will ever live the neighbors’ gossip down. He felt extremely strange standing there, a stranger intruding on the lives of others. He lived there, once, but he never belonged.

He shook the pensive mood that settled over him and knocked on Figg’s door. She was surprised, but she signalled at him to keep the volume down and let him in. The living room was not as he remembered - there were toys, and a mat - _is there a sleeping baby here?!_ he wondered. 

“So? To what do I owe the pleasure?” Arabella asked.  
“Uh, I have, erm, reason to believe you knew my… old Potions teacher.” Arabella tensed immediately, but relaxed when she remembered Harry cleared Severus’s name and arranged for a respectable burial for him. She did not attend the funeral. Newborns generally keep people too busy.   
“How did you know?” she inquired.   
“I will explain soon,” he said, “but I must know what happened here.”   
“Albus introduced us. Severus was having a hard time occluding, as Voldemort was gaining his strength back, three and a half years ago. I helped him, in my own way.” After all the hard time Snape gave Harry about Occlumency, it turned out that the master himself needed help. An old anger rose in Harry, and quickly subsided.   
“How come he didn’t tell me?” Harry asked aloud.   
“If I knew him, he must have been worried about what would have happened to me if anyone found out.”   
“Happen to you? What was I going to do?” _Who said anything about you_ , Arabella thought to herself. _I have to make sure my child turns out less arrogant. And thick._   
“You? Nothing. Although, imagine if you found out I have been helping him before you found out about his true allegiance, Harry.”   
“I probably would have wanted to kill you,” he admitted. “How long have you known?”   
“I figured it out after the first time we met, to be perfectly honest.”   
Harry’s jaw dropped. “How?!” he asked.   
“A magician never reveals his secrets, and neither will I,” Arabella said with a smile. “You should know, your mother… she was… somebody very special. He told me a lot about her. I have some letters, if you would like to read them, one day I might be strong enough to look at them again.”

Harry’s eyes burned for a brief moment, as he remembered how Snape finally let his guard down and all he could say was Lily’s name. A baby’s cry came from another room. Arabella got up and sighed. “She is usually very well-behaved. Let’s see what’s bothering her.”

She returned, cradling a months-old, black-haired, black-eyed baby. “And this is?” Harry wondered. _A niece or a granddaughtet, surely_ , he told himself. Arabella introduced the child to him: “This is Eileen-Lily.”

The wheels in Harry’s mind started to turn, but the fundamental facts of biology jammed them. Eventually, he managed to ask: “What?!”  
“Oh, don’t look so surprised.” Arabella dismissed his shock. “Surely you realize her father was capable to brewing a simple fertility potion.”   
Arabella Figg always enjoyed taking wizards down a peg.

“Well, this he has to see,” Harry muttered to himself. This must have been why he asked him to give Arabella the stone, he realized. “He wanted me to give you something,” he told her.

“Didn’t you just say he never told you about me?” Arabella asked.  
“It’s a little complicated. It’s a magic stone… it brings back the dead. Their souls.”

The baby cried. Arabella tried to calm her down. She failed - probably because she felt like crying too. “You mean I can see him? Talk to him?” she asked, both skeptical and pleading. He took the stone out of his pocket and examined it.  
“The dead are at peace. Summoning them soothes us, but only troubles them. But he asked me to give this to you. Will you be able to keep the stone a secret?” he asked her. _Why do wizards always question my ability to keep a secret?_ Arabella wondered. “What do you think, Harry?” she said, scolding. Harry finally realized he asked a stupid question. “Squibs can use magical objects. I can probably work this thing on my own.”

She took the stone and turned it, and the form of Severus Snape appeared, nearly in the flesh. “Severus.” She said softly to her friend, and Severus stood motionless and silent, and surveyed the room with his eyes.

As if Arabella needed him to tell her that, he informed her: “You survived.”  
“Well, yes,” she replied. The curse was broken, if it ever was. “There is someone you should meet,” Arabella said, and picked up the fussing infant. As soon as she saw her father, Eileen-Lily relaxed. “Severus, this is Eileen-Lily Figg.”

“I have a…” he said to himself, nearly choking, not believing. Severus fixed his eyes on the child, and if he had had any desire to pay any attention to Harry Potter, he would have seen Harry wiping a tear with his sleeve - but he did not. His black eyes met the child’s, and both pairs were happy; somehow, Severus managed to accomplish the purpose for which he became a Death Eater - a better life for his child. _His_ happy, healthy child.   
“She is mag-” Arabella started to say, but Severus knew exactly what she was. “She is perfect.” he pronounced.   
He finally managed to tear his gaze away from her. “Potter. Everything I have. Make it so it’s hers. My Gringotts account, and the House at Spinner’s End. All of it.”

The business of magical inheritance was going to be tricky, the stone being a secret and the relationship between Severus and Arabella an even bigger secret, somehow, but Harry was determined. Perhaps it was a subconscious desire for the second witch of Privet Drive to know who her parents were, perhaps it was plain gratitude, or just sentimentality, but he finally knew how he would occupy himself in the foreseeable future. _Perhaps Lucius will help me pull some strings. The Malfoys do owe him one,_ he thought.

“She will be proud to be a Snape, I promise you,” said Harry.  
“Prince,” Severus corrected him absentmindedly, as he resumed committing Eileen-Lily’s features to memory.   
“A Prince, then,” Harry said, and signaled to Arabella that he was leaving.

Severus looked at the child and her mother. Eileen-Lily Figg. The names of the three women he loved in the fourth, a perfectly impossible and an impossibly perfect princess.

All was well.


End file.
